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CASE-STUDY  POSSIBILITIES 

A  FOREl  A^  1 


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Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 
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400  BoYLSTON  St.,  Boston 

1922 


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Case  Work 


400  BoYLSTON  St.,  Boston 
1922 


What  Becomes  of  the 
Unmarried  Mother? 

A  FOLLOW-UP  STUDY  OF  82  CASES 
by 

Alberta  S.B.Gmbord,M.D. 

and 

Ida  R.  Parker 

PART   I 
,„!«..  study      -     BrA.ber.a8.B.Guibo,d.M.. 

A.  Mental  Examination 

B  Personal    History 

C.  Physical  Examination 

D.  Family  History 

PART   II 

^   ..  «  «ittidv     -     By  Ida  R.  Parker 

Follow-up  »tuoy  "y 

Section   1     Treatment 
..  2    Subsequent  History 

PART  III 

General  Conclusions 

50c  per  copy,  10  copies  ^4.00,   postage  prep 
Research  Bureau  on  Social  Case-Work 


400  Boylston  St., 


Boston,  M 


(ov 


CASE^STUDY  POSSIBILITIES 

A  FORECAST 


f^/^^As 


By 


ADA  ELIOT  SHEFFIELD 
Director  Research  Bureau  on  Social  Case  Work 


Research  Bureau  on  Social  Case  Work 

400  BoYLSTON  St.,  Boston 

1922 


■•-  •    -• 


•  •       •    •  • 
• •      •  •••  . 

••••••        •      • 


54-% 


(K^ 


CASE-STUDY  POSSIBILITIES 

A    FORECAST 

CONTENTS 

I.  "Clue  Aspects''  in  Social  Case  Work 7 

A.  Case  work  becoming  part  of  a  science  of  socialized  per- 

sonality. 
Associational  life  and  "maladjustment/' 
Case  histories  as  social  data  for  the  study  of  malad- 
justment. 

B.  The  tentative  rationale  of  analysis. 

The  two  factors :  endowment  and  functional  relations. 
— The  first  factor  entrusted  to  specialists. 
— The  second  factor  a  subject  for  fresh  definition; 
personality  as  web  of  relations;  the  levels  of  re- 
lationship. 
The  "social  point  of  view." 

C.  The  case  worker's  opportunity  to  further  social  science. 

The  case  worker's  access  to  evidence. 
The  social  value  of  the  evidence. 

D.  The  analysis  of  case  histories. 

Relational  categories  vs.  narrative. 

The  relational  category  and  the  "clue  aspect." 

— The  self-family  relation  as  illustration. 

— Three  instances  that  yield  clues. 
The  need  of  a  social  terminology. 

II.  Public  Agencies  as  Public  Carriers  of  Ideas 20 

Introduction.     Case  analysis  and  socially  formative  ideas. 

A.     The  public  agency  an  agency  of  public  opinion : 
It  must  develop  policies ; 
Policies  apply  ideas ;  hence 
The  agency  has  an  educational  role. 


r)2r)Sic 


B.  The  level  of  public  opinion  that  shall  set  standards: 

The  tradition  of  "average"  standards 

— Illustrated  by  instances  ; 

— Criticized  as  inadequate. 
The  claim  of  "social  expert"  standards. 

C.  The  idea  of  status  as  involving  social  standards : 

Three  cases  that  illustrated  the  status-motive ; 
The  cases  interpreted  for  the  valuations  involved. 

Conclusion.     Policies  carry  sanctions  for  social  ideas. 

III.    A  Future  Function  of  Private  Agencies 33 

A.  The    bearing   upon   this   question   of    the    function   of 

agencies  other  than  social. 
Public    departments    and    the    obviousness    of    their 

service. 
Law   enforcing   agencies    and   the    relation    between 

obvious  consequences  and  enforceability. 

B.  The  need  for  a  study  of  the  habits  that  condition  the 

public  sensitiveness  to  consequences. 
Such    a    study    not    currently    expected    of    private 
agencies : 
— The  current  idea  of  their  function. 
But  such  a  study  quite  consistent  with  their  present 
function : 
— The  advantageous  position  of  the  case  worker 
for  social  observation. 

C.  The  change  of  appeal  which  such  a  function  would  make 

upon  private  boards. 
The  present  appeal  to  a  sense  of  accomplishment  with 
numerous  and  "hopeful"  cases: 
— Growing  discontent  with  this  appeal  on  the  part 
of  case  workers. 
The  more  satisfying  appeal  to  a  sense  of  advancing 
social  insight. 


IV.     Social  Case  Interpretation  for  Research 40 

A.  Present  descriptive  methods  not  precise  enough  to  serve 

research : 
No  generally  accepted  conception  of  diagnosis; 
No  consistent  terminology  for  diagnosis. 

B.  The  nature  of  case  interpretation: 

Description  in  terms  of  cause-effect  relations ; 
Its  dependence  on  precise  terminology. 

C.  Precise  interpretation  serves  systematic  comparison  of 

case  histories : 

The  function  of  comparison ; 

The  units  of  comparison 
— The  question  of  individual  and  type 
— Descriptive  blurring  of  fact-items 
— Fact-item  and  social  fact :  the  criterion  of  a  social 
fact ;  social  facts  and  analysis  cards. 


PREFACE 

The  approach  here  proposed  to  a  scientific  study  of  group 
relations  in  family  and  neighborhood  is  based  on  the  analysis  of 
histories  of  a  number  of  unmarried  mothers.  For  social  study 
the  unmarried  mother  problem  has  special  interest.  First  because 
it  deals  with  a  transient,  or  casual  variation  upon  the  family 
group.  Whereas  a  normal  family  is  a  partnership  between  a 
strong  worker  and  a  socially  competent  mate  for  the  long  care  of 
helpless  young,  this  group  precipitated  by  nature  into  a^  family 
status,  is  yet  so  disrupted  by  its  lack  of  sanction  in  feeling  that 
except  for  social  pressure  it  disintegrates  at  once,  the  stronger 
parent  usually  taking  his  natural  advantage  to  abscond,  and  the 
mother  seeking  the  first  chance  to  be  relieved  of  an  infant  that 
keeps  her  in  a  status  of  maternity  without  honor.  Second,  the 
fact  that  illegitimacy  makes  an  abortive  family  group  relates  it  to 
several  important  and  complex  social  questions.  It  involves  at 
once  the  marriage  laws,  the  social  evil,  the  causal  factors  in  infant 
mortality,  and  the  phenomena  of  mental  defect  and  instability. 
This  complexity  and  theoretical  scope,  together  with  the  practical 
oversight  it  entails  for  the  detached  and  somewhat  ostracized 
woman  with  a  baby  make  illegitimacy  a  problem  that,  once 
grasped,  should  afford  valuable  data  and  a  working  method  for 
other  problems. 

Adequately  to  demonstrate  the  possibilities  of  the  type  of 
analysis  here  proposed  calls  for  its  application  to  many  more 
social  histories.     This  task  I  am  now  entering  uf>on. 

The  first  two  chapters  of  this  monograph  were  read  before 
the  National  Conference  of  Social  Workers  in  1921  and  1922, 
Chapter  I  having  also  appeared  in  the  Survey.  The  first  part  of 
this  chapter,  however,  has  been  entirely  rewritten  and  some  re- 
visions made  throughout. 

I  am  indebted  to  the  Permanent  Charity  Fund  for  the 
faith  and  patience  they  have  shown  in  waiting  for  results  from  a 
piece  of  work  which  has  proved  much  more  exacting  than  I  an- 
ticipated in  its  demand  for  carefully  thought  out  preliminaries. 
I  am  also  under  obligation  to  a  number  of  Boston  social  agencies 
which  have  not  only  allowed  me  access  to  their  written  records,  but 
have  generously  permitted  me  to  take  the  time  of  their  workers 
for  discussing  problems  involved  in  the  case  histories  I  have  used. 

A.  E.  S. 
Boston,  October,  1922. 


CHAPTER   I. 

"CLUE  ASPECTS"  IN  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK 

The  possibility  of  gradually  building  up  a  science  of  con- 
duct, of  personality  conceived  as  a  center  of  interpenetrating 
social  forces  has  received  recognition  from  one  after  another 
important  spokesman  in  related  social  fields.  A  succession  of 
students,  increasing  rapidly  within  the  last  decade,  have  been 
taking  methodical  steps  to  bring  mental  science  to  bear  upon 
significant  modes  of  behavior.  This  interest  has  been  stimulated 
in  part  at  least  by  the  increasingly  complex  associational  life  of 
the  modern  world.  Where  men  are  congregated  in  large  num- 
bers, where  they  form  themselves  into  business  associations, 
trade  unions,  churches,  clubs,  lodges,  leagues,  boards,  committees, 
the  situations  into  which  any  one  man  may  have  to  fit  himself 
become  infinitely  varied.  With  these  multiplied  demands  upon 
his  adaptability  any  difficulties  of  adjustment  between  himself 
and  his  social  and  physical  setting  come  to  stand  out  conspicu- 
ously. Variations  in  the  types  of  such  "maladjustment"  appear, 
while  at  the  same  time,  so  interlocked  are  social  activities,  the 
consequences  of  these  frictions  become  of  more  serious  import. 
The  hope  for  social  progress  is  that  a  systematic  study  of  conduct, 
of  social  situations,  may  lead  to  a  science  which  can  be  incor- 
porated into  educational  methods  and  practically  applied. 

Obviously  such  a  study  must  be  based  on  concrete  instances. 
At  first  thought  one  might  expect  that  fiction  of  the  better  sort 
would  afford  a  basis. ^  In  it  we  find  detailed  accounts  of  the 
lives  of  men  and  women  in  a  wide  variety  of  settings,  built  up 
out  of  the  experience  of  keen  social  observers.  Why  not  study 
these  stories?  A  further  reflection  gives  the  reason,  namely, 
that  although  the  best  fiction  may  afford  hypotheses  for  behavior 
patterns,  their  validity  would  still  have  to  be  tested  out  through 


*  Just  as  popular  proverbs,  maxims,  and  fables  and  quotations  from 
great  writers  afford  a  basis  of  Alexander  Shand's  Foundations  of  Char- 
acter. 


^  »9  •^^ 


instances  from  actual  life.  In  a  scientific  sense  no  one  can  know 
that  things  happen  typically  as  they  do  in  this  or  that  novel. 
This  objection,  one  might  think,  would  be  met  by  using  biog- 
raphies as  material  for  study.  Here  is  the  fact  basis  afforded  by 
actual  life.  But  a  further  requirement  here  comes  to  light.  The 
evidence,  documentary  and  observational,  from  which  biographies 
are  written  is  as  a  rule  all  in  the  closed  book  of  the  past.  The 
events  and  circumstances  of  a  man's  life  were  not  noted  at  the 
time  they  occurred  by  observers  who  had  the  study  of  conduct 
and  situation  patterns  in  mind,  and  cannot  be  subjected  now 
to  that  steady  interchange  between  continuing  observation  on  the 
one  hand  and  analysis  and  interpretation  on  the  other,  such  as 
renders  the  fact  content  of  histories  progressively  exact  and 
relevant  and  at  the  same  time  tests  the  social  student's  findings. 
This  sort  of  interchange,  with  the  possibility  of  an  indefinite 
enrichment  of  material  for  study,  can  be  obtained  through  the 
histories  of  their  clients  (persons  asking  assistance)  that  are 
kept  by  the  better-equipped  case-work  agencies  (social  agencies 
that  assist  individuals  in  need). 

To  persons  unfamiliar  with  ''case  work,"  as  it  is  inaptly 
called,  a  proposal  to  put  its  findings  to  use  in  the  advancement 
of  social  science  may  seem  ill-judged.  Case  work  is  often  done 
under  pressure  of  time,  with  scant  funds,  and  by  men  or  women 
unequal  to  more  than  a  routine  of  kind  offices  in  dealing  with 
people  who  need  help.  The  histories  of  their  clients  are  written 
as  narrative  without  causal  connection,  the  happenings  of  each 
day  being  often  hastily  dictated  to  a  stenographer  in  order  to  get 
them  recorded  before  forgotten.  But  to  any  one  who  has  been 
close  to  the  work  of  well-equipped  agencies  and  of  qualified 
workers,  these  shortcomings  are  recognized  as  due  to  local  or,  it 
is  hoped,  temporary  conditions.  In  the  meantime  the  research 
student,  by  confining  his  request  for  cooperation  to  agencies  that 
are  in  a  position  to  do  relatively  "intensive"  work,  will  find 
social  histories  that  may  be  expected  increasingly  to  repay  atten- 
tion. 

These  better-equipped  agencies  can,  if  they  will,  develop 
their  now  latent  resources  for  this  sort  of  social  activity.     In  the 

8 


first  place  a  fair  number  of  them  are  already  spending  sufficient 
time  and  money  to  meet  the  needs  for  research  cooperation  sug- 
gested in  this  monograph.  What  the  student  will  ask  of  them  is 
more  searching  thought  about  the  problems  of  their  clients,  a 
kind  of  reflection  which  will  equally  further  an  effective  refine- 
ment of  their  own  treatment  methods.  In  the  second  place,  well- 
equipped  agencies  are  already  concerning  themselves  to  improve 
their  methods  of  recording  their  knowledge  of  and  dealings  with 
clients.  Third,  the  training  of  social  case  workers  is  already 
organized,  a  professional  spirit  is  beginning  to  show  itself  among 
them,  so  that  progressive  organizations  may  anticipate  with  con- 
fidence a  progress  in  the  training  and  skill  of  those  they  employ. 

The  use  of  the  word  material  as  something  which  the  student 
is  to  look  to  social  agencies  to  supply  does  not  for  a  moment 
mean  that  case  work  should  become  actuated  by  the  purpose  of 
collecting  data  for  study.  Its  purpose,  whether  in  gathering  evi- 
dence or  in  using  it  must  always  be  to  help  the  client  in  the  ad- 
justment of  himself  and  his  affairs.  This  humanly  interested 
aim  is  an  actual  advantage  to  the  further  use  of  the  data  for 
study.  For  the  validity  of  a  science  of  satisfactory  living  must 
be  constantly  tested  by  its  "treatment"  relevance,  and  hence  may 
well  be  based  on  data  collected  with  a  practical  end  in  view. 

It  is  not  here  claimed  that  social  case  histories  will  yield 
data  of  every  sort  needed  by  a  growing  social  science.  ^The 
clients  who  appeal  to  agencies  for  assistance  are  apt  to  be  people 
of  limited  group  connections.  Their  family  and  neighborhood 
situations  a  sympathetic  and  skilled  worker  can  come  to  under- 
stand well.  The  situations  that  develop  among  members  of 
political  organizations,  unions,  clubs,  boards,  committees  and 
so  on,  must  be  studied  from  data  that  are  supplemented  from 
other  sources  than  those  ordinarily  accessible  to  the  case  worker. 

The  Tentative  Rationale  of  Analysis 

If  students  of  social  science  must  be  shown  the  possibilities  in 
case-work  study,  practical  workers  on  their  side  may  ask  whether 
as  yet  these  pioneers  have  really  sketched  out  a  trustworthy  con- 

9 


ception  and  rationale  of  their  scientific  task.  In  answer  we  find 
at  least  the  foreshadowing  of  an  agreed  rationale  of  analysis  in 
dealing  with  personality  and  situation.  This  analysis  falls 
naturally  into  two  main  divisions:  the  individual's  biological  en- 
dowment, and  the  relationships  which  show  the  interplay  between 
this  native  endowment  and  his  social  milieu.  The  first  division 
would  cover  the  individual's  heredity,  his  physical  and  his  mental 
make-up;  the  second  would  include  his  relation  with  his  family 
and  their  neighborhood  setting,  his  sexual  life,  his  relation  with 
employer  and  fellow  employees,  his  recreational  opportunities 
and  choices,  his  church  relation,  and  his  response  to  the  efforts 
of  rehabilitating  agencies  public  or  private.  Other  group  asso- 
ciations and  their  settings  he  might  have  also,  but  these  are  the 
ones  about  which  social  case  workers  most  commonly  get  in- 
formation. 

The  first  of  these  two  divisions  is  self-explanatory,  and 
would  probably  be  accepted  without  question.  It  gives  that  part 
of  the  case  histories  which  has  been  more  or  less  standardized 
by  specialists  in  eugenics,  medicine,  and  psychiatry.  The  second 
division,  the  one  analyzing  the  specifically  social  facts,  calls  for 
explanation. 

The  proposal  that  these  social  facts  should  be  analyzed  in 
terms  of  relational  groupings  is  based  on  a  conception  of  per- 
sonality. The  ultimate  units  for  the  analysis  of  social  situations 
are  not  personalities  thought  of  as  free  agents  set  over  against 
circumstances;  they  are  rather  this  or  that  person's  socially  con- 
ditioned habits — established  modes  of  activity — within  which  per- 
sonality and  circumstance  are  inseparable  terms.  Since  all  of 
any  given  person's  significant  habits  form  themselves  within  re- 
lationships between  himself  and  environing  persons,  institutions, 
and  ideas,  his  personality  is  a  web-like  creation  of  a  self  inter- 
acting with  other  selves  in  a  succession  of  situations.  As  this 
idea  gains  ground  we  shall  talk  less  of  the  individual  as  a  solid 
and  self-contained  unit,  moving  and  acting  in  an  environment  of 
other  solid  and  self-contained  units,  all  mutually  distinct  and  ex- 
ternal.   We  shall  talk  more  of  defining  relationships,  of  motiva- 


10 


tions  among  lives  that  interpenetrate.  This  idea  is  in  Dr.  Wil- 
Ham  White's  mind  when  he  writes/  "the  interplay  of  forces  be- 
tween the  individual  and  the  environment  is  constant  and  never- 
ending.  *  *  *  The  individual  then  becomes  not  a  something  apart 
from  the  environment  and  therefore  apart  from  contact  with  the 
rest  of  the  universe,  but  a  place  where  innumerable  forces  are 
for  the  time  being  concentrated.  In  that  sense  the  individual  is 
only  a  transmitter  and  transmuter  of  energy  while  the  terms  in- 
dividual and  environment  are  only  two  extremes  of  the  relation- 
ship." 

If  this  is  true,  then  what  we  ordinarily  think  of  as  the  per- 
sonality of  a  client  appears  and  is  developed  in  the  interplay  of 
character  forces  between  himself  and  others  in  one  and  in  an- 
other of  the  various  groups  of  people  which  help  to  create  and 
enrich  his  social  life,  each  relationship  affording  situations  that 
give  scope  and  stimulus  to  some  special  aspect  of  his  nature.  It 
is  within  these  various  groupings  that  a  man's  values  in  life  take 
shape.  The  things  he  prizes,  his  guiding  sentiments  of  love,  of 
family  dignity,  of  ambition,  of  religion,  of  friendship,  of  citizen- 
ship— sentiments  which  "integrate"  his  habits  and  give  purpose 
to  his  life — are  all  formed  by  the  joint  activity  of  his  mind  with 
other  minds,  organized  into  circles  that  conserve  and  reinforce 
those  values. 

A  further  step  in  the  analysis  of  personality  seems  estab- 
lished. The  relationships  radiating  from  the  self  may  reach  to 
any  of  three  distinct  levels  of  interest :  the  level  of  other  persons, 
the  level  of  institutions,  and  the  level  of  ideas.  Within  each 
field  of  relationship — that  of  sex,  of  occupation,  of  recreation, 
etc. — the  level  actually  spanned  by  the  web  of  interest  depends 
on  the  vividness  with  which  the  personality  has  realized  the 
potential  values  in  that  field.  One  girl,  for  instance,  will  grasp 
in  the  field  of  religion  only  her  relation  to  worshipping  neighbors 
and  the  officiating  priests ;  a  second  will  have  a  definite  and  vital 
sense  of  her  church  as  an  institution;  more  rarely  a  third  will 
rise  to  the  ideas  of  mystic  experience  by  which  religion  can  be 


"Mechanics  of  Character  Formation",  p.  243. 

11 


reflectively  defined.  At  the  other  extreme  may  occur — in  cases 
of  arrested  development  or  mental  disorder — impulses  and  habits 
so  unintegrated  as  to  fall  at  a  sub-personal  level,  attaining  to  no 
socializing  function. 

This  is  what  social  workers  mean,  sometimes  vaguely  it 
must  be  admitted,  when  they  refer  to  the  "social  point  of  view." 
It  differs  from  that  of  most  medical  men,  psychiatrists  included, 
and  from  that  of  most  practicing  psychologists — those  who  ex- 
amine people  for  their  intelligence  levels.  These  specialists 
from  the  very  nature  of  their  training  and  their  daily  work,  tend 
to  take  an  atomic  view  of  the  individual,  to  think  of  him  more 
as  a  self-sufficient  unit  impinged  upon  by  environmental  forces 
than  as  an  integral  part  of  his  social  setting.  This  fundamental 
difference  of  conception  often  prevents  these  members  of  the 
more  established  fields  of  study  from  getting  as  much  as  they 
might  from  social  work.  It  stands  in  the  way  of  their  catching 
the  relevance  of  many  fact-items  obtained  by  social  agencies  for 
their  own  treatment  purpose.  The  difficulty  at  bottom  is  due  to  the 
fact  that  no  one  yet  has  subjected  to  methodical  analysis  and  in- 
terpretation the  data  amassed  in  social  histories.  Any  method 
which  proves  fruitful  for  the  study  of  these  histories  may  be 
expected  in  time  to  yield  clarifying  illustrations  of  the  viewpoint 
of  social  workers. 

The  Case  Worker^s  Opportunity 

In  two  respects  social  case  workers  have  a  unique  oppor- 
tunity to  further  the  specific  application  of  this  formula.  First, 
their  efforts  to  rehabilitate  persons  who  for  one  reason  or  an- 
other are  out  of  adjustment  with  their  surroundings  bring  them 
into  an  intimate  knowledge  of  the  trials  and  struggles  of  these 
persons  with  their  families,  their  work,  their  companions,  extend- 
ing over  a  considerable  period  of  time — over  months  or  even 
years.  Second,  they  are  dealing  with  difficulties  or  maladjust- 
ments which  in  some  degree  are  universal.  Their  cases  are 
merely  conspicuous  or  exaggerated  instances  of  failure  in  per- 
sonal adaptation  or  in  social  machinery — the  same  in  kind  as  those 

12 


which  we  all  experience.  From  one  point  of  view  they  may  be 
thought  of  as  representing  society's  analysis  of  its  own  mal- 
adaptations.  Elements  in  the  interplay  of  character  and  situation 
which  everywhere  make  suffering,  but  which  go  unnoticed, 
hitches  in  the  social  machinery  which  everywhere  bring  a  waste 
of  human  energy  but  which  when  slight  may  continue  indefinitely 
unheeded,  reveal  themselves  for  what  they  are  in  maladjustments 
so  pronounced  that  clients  must  turn  to  social  workers  for  help. 
As  normal  psychology  has  profited  from  the  study  of  dis- 
sociated and  exaggerated  pathological  mental  states,  so  may  not 
sociology  profit  from  the  study  of  aberrations  and  failures  in 
social  adjustment?  The  problems  involved  in  illegitimacy,  for 
instance,  are  a  case  in  point.  Standards  being  what  they  are, 
practically  every  instance  of  unmarried  motherhood  represents 
some  serious  shortcoming  in  a  girl's  early  family  life,  and  some- 
thing abortive  in  her  instinctive  promptings  to  start  another 
family.  It  is  often  one  of  the  symptoms  of  the  recreational  im- 
poverishment among  working  people,  and  frequently  goes  along 
with  vocational  misfitness.  Yet  any  one  of  these  ills  can  be 
found  separately  in  all  walks  of  life,  among  all  grades  of  people. 
Respectable  families  make  serious  mistakes  in  rearing  their 
young ;  girls  and  women  of  unimpeachable  virtue  may  meet  with 
unhappiness  in  their  sex  life;  a  sigh  over  their  early  vocational 
misplacement  rises  from  a  large  proportion  of  the  middle-aged. 
For  this  reason  I  venture  to  hold  that  the  analysis  of  cases  of 
unmarried  mothers,  of  deserted  wives  or  widows,  of  delinquent 
or  neglected  children,  and  a  reflective  comparison  between  such 
analyses  could  be  made  to  throw  increasing  light  upon  a  consid- 
erable variety  of  the  personal  and  educational  problems  of  the 
average  "normal"  man  and  woman. 

The  Analysis  of  Case  Histories 

Such  a  contribution  means  that  analysis  must  begin  with 
case-recording,  and  that  histories  must  be  written,  thinking  must 
be  done  analytically  instead  of  as  at  present  in  "storiette"  se- 
quence.   What  the  case  worker  is  concerned  with  is  not  a  story, 

13 


but  a  problem  which  must  be  factored  out  before  it  can  be  solved. 
The  categories  af  analysis  I  propose  are  the  familiar  ones  of 
family,  occupation,  recreation,  and  so  on,  which  have  guided  case 
workers  in  their  investigation  for  many  years.  The  new  step 
would  be  first  that  workers  should  train  themselves  to  think  of 
the  relationships,  the  interactions  between  client  and  milieu  as  the 
important  things  and  second  that  in  dictating  their  material  to 
stenographers,  tliey  should,  while  keeping  the  chronological  in- 
terview intact  if  desired,  yet  bear  these  relational  categories  in 
mind.  It  means  a  somewhat  different  way  of  thinking  about 
case  histories  and  will  at  first  take  more  time.  To  compensate 
,for  this  it  holds  promise,  because  of  the  sharper  thinking  that  it 
induces,  of  a  gain, in  power  to  give  practical  help  to  clients  and 
of  a  steadily  advancing  professional  insight. 

,  For  the  purpose  of  comparative  study  analysis  must  be 
carried  to  a  point  further  than  this.  A  method  for  such  sub- 
analysis  and  the  interpretation  that  springs  out  of  it  will  be  dis- 
cussed on  page  54,  but  in  order  to  illustrate  what  the  analysis 
and  comparison  which  I  have  in  mind  may  yield,  let  me  here 
discuss  certain  family  relationships  in  the  cases  of  three  un- 
married mothers,  drawing  the  comparison  on  features  of  social 
experience  in  the  home  which  for  each  girl  contributed  to  her 
social  nature  and  her  ideals.  By  social  experience  in  this  con- 
nection I  mean  her  education  in  sensitivity  to  public  opinion — 
in  the  nature  of  society's  approvals  and  disapprovals  and  in  the 
manner  in  which  those  approvals  and  disapprovals  are  expressed. 
It  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  family  is  not  a  single  relationship, 
but  a  field  of  relations  corresponding  to  a  network  of  family 
functions.  There  is  the  relation  between  the  parents,  between 
parents  and  children,  among  the  children  themselves,  to  all  of 
which  the  advent  of  grandchildren  will  add  a  new  set.  Any 
one  member  of  a  family  may  be  thought  of  in  several  relations, 
each  involving  its  appropriate  function.  The  father  is  provider, 
protector,  mirror  of  public  opinion  to  his  children ;  the  mother  is 
housekeeper  and  priestess  of  the  home;  the  children  are  family' 
pets,  future  breadwinners,  budding  citizens,  etc.  By  exemplify-, 
ing  all  these  roles  the  persons  in  a  family  sustain  between  them 

14 


the  distinctive  sentiments  in  the  family  field;  and,  since  these 
sentiments  set  patterns  of  habit  for  all  concerned,  it  is  reason- 
able to  expect  that  in  a  family  where  a  daughter  has  been  un- 
chaste something  impaired  or  abortivev  will  be  found  among  the 
family  relationships.  Whatever  in  the  data  in  the  case  shall 
appear  to  affect  the  functioning  of  habits  that  sway  the  girl's 
social  thinking  will  be  a  clue  of  the  scientific  sort  which  it  is 
hoped  will  be  recognized  in  future  social  work.  Observation, 
that  is,  will  aim  to  identify  clue-aspects  in  the  state  of  the  girl's 
self-family  relations. 

All  three  of  the  unmarried  mothers  here  considered  were 
healthy  girls ;  two  of  them  were  normal  in  intelligence,  while  one 
was  perhaps  slightly  subnormal.  The  fathers  of  all  three  were 
of  the  grade  of  small  proprietors.  One  of  them  owned  his  own 
fishing-craft,  the  other  two  their  farms.  All  three  were  in- 
dustrially stable  and  all  the  families  had  lived  a  number  of  years 
in  detached  houses.  The  neighborhoods  in  which  they  lived 
might  be  described  as  being  one  rural,  one  semi-rural  (within 
city  limits  but  in  farming  country)  and  one  outskirt  (in  a  part 
of  the  city  just  beyond  the  more  thickly  populated  center).  In 
all  three  instances  both  mother  and  child  ended  by  becoming 
happily  assimilated  into  the  community.  At  this  point  the  re- 
semblances that  concern  our  study  end.  In  their  family  relations 
the  three  daughters  had  three  distinct  types  of  handicap  that  were 
contributory  to  their  social  lapse. 

In  the  first  family  the  relevant  facts  were  as  follows :  The 
father,  although  a  sober  man,  was  habitually  ugly  and  abusive 
at  home,  giving  way  to  a  violent  temper  and  beating  the  children. 
They  were  much  afraid  of  him,  as  was  also  his  wife.  For  ex- 
ample, when  the  latter  learned  of  her  daughter's  pregnancy,  she 
appeared  indifferent  except  to  the  possibility  of  her  husband's 
finding  it  out.  Overworked,  with  numerous  children,  the  wife 
kept  an  untidy  home,  and  made  no  attempt  to  cope  with  her 
husband  or  to  control  her  boys  and  girls.  The  latter  quarreled 
among  themselves.  The  girl  in  question  said  that  her  father  was 
sometimes  kind  to  the  others,  never  to  her,  and  that  she  there- 
fore avoided  him  at  all  times.     She  could  recall  no  show  of 

15 


affection  from  either  parent  during  her  whole  childhood— a  fair 
indication  that  the  parents  took  no  pleasure  in  their  little  girl. 

In  such  a  family  the  father,  who  should  have  exemplified  to 
his  children  the  social  approvals  and  disapprovals  which  their 
conduct  would  meet  outside  the  family  group,  failed  in  his  func- 
tion as  a  representative  to  them  of  the  community.  Parental 
anger  had  for  them  no  significance  because  it  was  incalculable, 
immoderate,  prompted  not  by  social  sentiments  but  by  nerves. 
Missing  on  the  one  hand  the  intimations  of  a  fostering  parental 
concern  and  on  the  other  the  incipient  signs  of  social  demurring, 
the  children  developed  no  fineness  of  response.  They  might  be 
described  as  socially  hard  of  hearing.  In  this  connection  it  may 
not  be  fanciful  to  point  out  that  when  it  came  to  the  girrs  love 
affairs,  her  sex  impulses  showed  themselves  with  as  little  subtlety 
as  had  her  father's  anger.  Her  flirtations  might  be  described  as 
crass.  What  else  could  be  expected  of  a  young  person  who  had 
never  been  initiated  into  that  common  social  language  of  quiet 
looks,  gestures,  intonations,  through  which  most  persons  learn  to 
sense  the  feelings  of  others,  and  to  express  their  own  various 
shades  of  approval  and  disapproval?  The  worker  who  knows 
this  girl  well  speaks  of  her  as  being  markedly  "obtuse  to  public 
opinion."  In  the  home  of  a  foster  mother  she  would  hang 
around  listening  to  conversations  that  did  not  concern  her,  and 
could  not  seem  to  comprehend  the  fact  that  she  was  not  wanted. 
She  was  entirely  untroubled  and  unashamed  at  the  prospect  of 
bearing  a  child  out  of  wedlock  and  for  a  long  time  could  not 
seem  to  grasp  the  fact  that  with  such  a  child  her  standing  was 
different  from  that  of  a  married  woman. 

The  facts  in  this  girl's  family  situation  disclose  two  distinct 
aspects  of  the  parental-filial  web  that  are  important  as  clues  not 
only  to  her  case  but  to  others  in  which  they  are  likely  to  recur. 
They  are,  first,  the  socially  irrelevant  anger  and,  second,  the 
deficient  parental  joy.  Each  of  these  represents  an  impairing  of 
the  function  of  a  sentiment  which  contributes  to  right  living. 

In  the  second  family  the  mother,  a  handsome,  vigorous 
woman,  was  probably  imfaithful  to  the  father  at  one  period ;  two 
brothers  have  been  pilferers.     They  did  wrong  but  they  all  have 

16 


apparently  rebounded ;  the  mother  and  sister  are  leading  unim- 
peachable lives,  the  brothers  seem  to  be  going  perfectly  straight. 
In  their  life  at  home  this  family  enjoy  each  other.  Every  Sun- 
day the  married  daughter,  her  husband  and  children  come  to 
spend  the  afternoon  with  her  parents — all  of  them,  parents, 
brothers  and  sisters,  sitting  together  for  talk.  The  mother  is 
devoted  to  her  illegitimate  grandchild,  as  is  also  her  husband ;  she 
gives  the  best  care  to  the  baby,  which  she  is  willing  to  have  taken 
for  her  own. 

The  daughter  in  question  "fell"  easily.  Although  previously 
chaste,  and  although  fully  instructed  in  sex  matters  by  her 
mother,  her  intimacy  with  the  father  of  her  child  began  on  slight 
acquaintance.  At  no  time  does  there  seem  to  have  been  the  least 
sentiment  between  them,  or  even  a  liking  that  could  be  called 
strongly  personal.  Nor  had  the  man  suggested  marriage.  When 
asked  why  she  did  this  thing,  the  girl  answered  that  she  did  it 
"to  please  him."  The  social  worker  who  first  talked  with  her 
said  her  head  seemed  filled  with  the  idea  of  being  the  central 
figure  in  the  marriage  ceremony.  Neither  she  nor  her  family 
took  her  situation  hard.  On  the  contrary,  they  appeared  highly 
cheerful  at  the  prospect  of  being  able  to  force  marriage  upon  the 
man.  When,  later,  it  became  evident  that  he  would  not  be  a  good 
provider,  they  turned  against  the  marriage.  Their  one  concern 
was  to  keep  the  incident  concealed  from  the  neighbors. 

These  facts,  together  with  the  sister's  belated  marriage  and 
the  mother's  probable  lapse  from  fidelity,  indicate  the  family's 
attitude  toward  marriage.  They  apparently  looked  upon  a  hus- 
band as  a  supporting  male — a  good  enough  notion  so  far  as  it 
goes,  but  taken  by  itself,  a  notion  on  the  infrapersonal  level. 
Their  cheerfulness  over  the  prospect  of  a  marriage  brought  about 
under  what  would  ordinarily  be  considered  unpropitious  and 
humiliating  conditions  suggests  that  in  their  minds  sex-gratifica- 
tion was  a  sufficient  guarantee  of  happiness.  Their  idea  of  sex 
attraction  was  what  Wilfred  Lay  would  call  an  immature  or  dis- 
integrated conception,  since  it  included  neither  aflfection,  nor  com- 
panionship, and  therefore  did  not  rise  to  the  sentiment  of  love. 
As  a  correlative  to  this  family  lack  in  sex  sentiment  was  the 

17 


mother's  apparent  lack  of  respect  for  marriage  as  an  institution. 
She  fell  short  in  her  function  as  priestess  of  the  home. 

In  this  illustration  family  life,  admirable  on  the  personal 
level,  is  accompanied  by  an  unsocialized  attitude  toward  mar- 
riage, which  was  apparently  a  factor  in  the  daughter's  uncontrol. 
The  two  outstanding  aspects  in  her  family  situation  were,  first, 
that  her  mother  failed  as  a  steadying  symbol  of  wedlock  to  the 
girl's  inchoate  sex-promptings,  and,  second,  that  the  very  con- 
geniality of  the  whole  family  group  made  them  self-sufficient 
and  inattentive  to  outside  opinion.  These  aspects  may  be  con- 
veniently termed  maternal  symbol  of  wedlock  and  self-sufficient 
family  group. 

The  third  family,  respectable  elderly  people,  fond  of  each 
other,  not  only  took  the  greatest  joy  in  their  one  daughter  but 
gave  her  religious  instruction  and  all  the  educational  opportuni- 
ties their  means  would  allow.  The  girl  was  of  a  pliable,  affec- 
tionate disposition  and  fully  returned  their  devotion,  spending 
most  of  her  time  out  of  school  or  working  hours  at  home.  This 
she  did  in  spite  of  being  very  popular  among  the  church  people 
and  neighborhood.  The  community  contained  few  young  i>eople, 
and  the  two  or  three  young  men  in  town  the  girl  knew  but 
slightly.  When  she  became  pregnant,  the  only  men  whose  names 
were  suggested  as  possibly  responsible  were  several  familiar  ac- 
quaintances of  the  parents,  in  age  two  or  three  times  that  of  the 
girl.  Although  one  of  these  men  had  paid  her  considerable  at- 
tention, the  mother  said  he  could  not  possibly  be  resp^onsible,  be- 
cause she  herself  had  always  been  present  when  he  called.  The 
two  had  never  been  alone.  She  remarked,  when  expressing  her 
grief  over  her  daughter,  that  she  had  hoped  no  one  would  ever 
wish  to  marry  the  girl  because  she  desired  to  keep  her  for  herself. 
The  responsible  man  was  married. 

In  this  case  the  daughter  was  apparently  thought  of  as  a 
household  pet  and  handmaid,  rather  than  as  a  person  who  was  to 
assume  adult  responsibilities.  Her  social  nature  was  sensitized 
to  a  quickness  of  sympathy  and  readiness  in  helping  others  that 
made  her  everywhere  beloved — and  then  her  parents  wished  to 
limit  her  in  the  field  of  family  relationship  to  the  filial  function 

18 


alone.  The  girl's  balked  impulses  took  their  one  opportunity  to- 
ward widening  her  range  of  function.  The  phrase  which  I  sug- 
gest as  giving  a  clue-aspect  of  the  sentiment  here  revealed  is 
affectionate  parental  monopoly. 

The  Need  of  a  Social  Terminology 

In  judging  the  validity  of  these  interpretations,  the  reader 
will  bear  in  mind  that  these  histories  were  not  written  nor  were 
the  facts  observed  with  any  intensive  study  in  view.  Moreover, 
the  social  vocabulary  used  by  case  workers  is  so  far  from  uni- 
form, notably  in  the  use  of  descriptive  adjectives,  that  in  spite 
of  careful  checking  up,  I  may  still  have  received  mistaken  im- 
pressions. In  fact,  any  advance  in  the  scientific  standing  of  case 
work  is  conditioned,  as  I  shall  discuss  later  on  page  50,  upon 
a  refining  of  our  descriptive  vocabulary.  It  is  with  this  in  mind 
that  I  have  attempted  to  supply  such  interpretative  terms  as  self- 
sufficient  family  life  and  affectionate  parental  monopoly,  in  order 
to  identify  clue-aspects  for  each  relationship.  As  one  case  his- 
tory follows  another,  all  analyzed  and  interpreted  on  the  same 
general  plan,  these  terms  will  begin  to  take  on  an  explicitness  of 
meaning  which  at  present  they  lack.  Meanwhile  even  the  vague 
terms  used  in  the  beginning  will  have  the  effect  of  leading 
workers  to  observe  with  more  discrimination  and  to  note  more 
alertly  the  significant  indications  of  interplay  between  endow- 
ment and  milieu.  Such  improved  terms  as  socially  irrelevant 
anger,  affectionate  parental  monopoly,  do  at  least  this:  they 
supply  a  worker  with  a  set  of  expectations  as  to  the  possibilities 
within  a  case.  And  she  will  work  with  the  inspiriting  conviction 
that  she  is  testing  her  observations  by  ideas  destined  to  count  in 
a  science  of  society. 


19 


CHAPTER  II 

PUBLIC  AGENCIES  AS  PUBLIC  CARRIERS  OF  IDEAS 

The  case  analysis  and  comparison  of  the  instances  cited  in 
the  preceding  chapter  have  served  to  crystaUize  and  make  articu- 
late interpretations  of  several  habitual  modes  of  activity  and 
feeling  that  may  take  place  within  the  family  group.  Involved 
in  the  activities  discussed  in  all  three  families  is  the  idea  that 
it  is  the  function  of  the  home  to  prepare  children  for  a  social 
life,  to  orient  them  towards  the  demands  of  larger  social  units. 
The  practical  meaning  of  such  an  idea,  the  practical  situations  to 
be  met  in  the  course  of  making  it  effective,  can  be  identified  by 
just  the  sort  of  analysis  that  is  here  under  discussion.  If  case 
analysis  helps  to  make  social  ideas  concrete,  it  is  for  educational 
agencies  of  every  description  to  make  valid  ideas  current.  One 
carrier  of  social  ideas  is  the  public  philanthropic  agency. 

The  Public  Agency  an  Agency  of  Public  Opinion 

The  policies  of  a  public  philanthropic  agency  naturally  begin 
as  half-defined  habits  of  action.  A  public  official  will  say  with 
all  sincerity  that  he  treats  each  case  that  comes  before  him  on 
its  unique  merits ;  yet  if  he  takes  time  to  look  back  over  a  period 
of  years  upon  the  relief  or  service  that  his  agency  has  given,  say, 
to  ambitious  mothers,  he  will  probably  find  that  he  has  tended 
to  deal  with  family  situations  roughly  similar  as  to  the  factor  of 
maternal  ambition  in  an  increasingly  similar  way.  In  other 
words,  he  has  formed  a  habit  of  action  without  realizing  it.  This 
habit,  because  he  has  thought  of  his  clients  as  detached  instances 
appearing  one  by  one,  has  remained  but  vaguely  recognized. 
Once  he  thinks  of  the  ambitious  mothers  he  has  treated  as  a 
class,  wherein  a  characteristic  feature  is  recurrent,  he  grows 
aware  of  a  drift  in  his  habitual  treatment.  He  can  recognize 
such  a  drift  as  having  a  cumulative  influence,  and  he  is  in  a 
position  to  inquire  whither  that  influence  is  tending — what  is  the 
feeling,  the  prejudice  perhaps,  the  idea  which  has  become  em- 
bodied in  it,  and  what  may  be  the  direct  and  indirect  conse- 

20 


quences  of  this  idea  as  carried  to  the  minds  of  the  people  helped 
and  of  their  neighbors.  In  short,  he  finds  himself  responsible 
for  a  policy/ 

A  philanthropic  policy,  then,  begins  as  a  vague  habit  of  action 
and  ends  as  a  carrier  of  a  socially  formative  idea.  Take,  for  ex- 
ample, the  policy  by  which  any  state  agent  boards  out  dependent 
children  in  families  of  their  own  religion.  Back  of  this  policy  is 
the  idea  that  church  and  state  should  be  fields  of  interest  mutually 
independent,  that  the  state  agency  should  not  identify  itself  with 
the  establishment  of  any  one  religion.  Again,  the  policy  that  a 
foreign-born  child  must  be  given  opportunity  to  learn  English 
applies  the  idea  that  the  unifying  of  a  people — "Americanizing" 
as  it  is  called  here — requires  a  common  language.  So  again,  a 
habit  of  giving  public  relief  grudgingly,  though  it  doubtless 
springs  from  the  need  of  guarding  the  public  purse,  yet  it  grows 
articulate  as  an  appeal  to  the  recipient's  self-respect,  and  the 
public  agent  becomes  a  virtual  spokesman  for  the  idea  that  self- 
support  means  social  standing  and  that  dependency  carries  a 
social  stigma. 

This  means  that  in  applying  policies  our  State  Boards  of 
Charity,  relief  officers,  agents  of  Mothers*  Pensions,  take  their 
place  among  the  public  educators.  That  we  do  not  ordinarily  so 
regard  them  is  because  we  find  their  habits  of  action  only  half- 
articulately  set  out  as  explicit  policies,  and  because  it  is  only 


*This  suggests  that  the  current  notion  that  boards  of  directors 
frame  policies  calls  for  qualification.  Boards  can  either  take  over 
policies  which  have  developed  and  been  tested  out  in  some  agency- 
similar  to  their  own,  or  else  they  can  confirm  or  modify  some  habitual 
treatment  of  a  typical  situation  which  their  case  workers  have  been 
meeting.  The  former  method  is  the  more  usual,  because  it  requires 
less  initiative;  the  latter,  although  seldom  found,  is  the  one  which 
makes  for  progress.  The  appraisal  of  dawning  policies  is  rare  because 
it  demands  case  workers  who  are  not  only  trained  to  watch  for  re- 
curring situations,  but  who  are  candid  and  courageous  enough  to  sub- 
mit their  habits  of  meeting  these  situations  to  the  scrutiny  of  a  board. 
To  present  an  occasional  puzzling  family  problem  to  a  committee  or 
board  does  not  put  its  members  in  the  way  of  deciding  upon  a  policy. 
This  is  merely  a  detached  decision.  The  worker  must  rather  present 
to  them  a  group  of  similar  problems  together  with  the  treatment  that 
was  given  and  its  outcome,  and  do  it  in  a  way  that  will  enable  a  board 
to  compare  them  in  the  brief  space  of  a  meeting. 

21 


when  a  policy  has  emerged  into  explicitness  that  we  can  identify 
its  kernel-idea  and  trace  its  influence.  At  present  a  relief  officer 
is  apt  to  think  of  a  jxxlicy  as  something  merely  negative  in  its 
function.  It  is  something  to  avert  trouble:  a  rule  to  fall  back 
upon  when  politicians  become  importunate,  a  maxim  that  affords 
safe  talking  points  when  hostile  criticism  impends.  But  as  some- 
thing with  educational  influence  its  function  is  positive,  and  the 
officer  who  brings  his  policies  into  the  open,  who  invites  scrutiny 
and  appraisal  of  their  ramifying  consequences,  becomes  an  agent 
for  social  thinking. 

Our  modern  community  has  become  so  complex  and  manifold 
that  the  ideas  which  are  to  form  and  animate  it  must  demand  our 
increasing  concern.  The  things  that  a  man  prizes  and  strives  for 
are  increasingly  marked  for  him  by  the  fact  that  men  in  neigh- 
borhoods, in  organized  groups,  in  social  classes,  are  striving  for 
them.  The  values  thus  collectively  appreciated,  and  motivating 
all  this  striving,  become  social  forces,  collective  habits  of  feeling 
and  behaving — ^traditions.  Consciously  identified  as  ideas,  they 
become  a  formative  social  heritage  for  each  oncoming  genera- 
tion; and  since  for  better  or  for  worse  this  heritage  is  subject 
to  continual  change,  it  becomes  momentous  for  the  community 
what  values  are  to  be  collectively  endorsed,  how  they  are  to  be 
made  socially  contagious  and  operative.  In  a  simpler  social 
order  this  respK>nsibility  for  ideas  might  be  entrusted  to  certain 
agencies  of  direct  concern  with  ideas:  to  schools,  to  churches,  to 
organizations  for  propaganda.  By  these  agencies  our  cultural 
standards  could  be  identified,  evaluated,  promulgated,  and  then 
left  to  embody  themselves  in  men's  lives  and  actions.  But  in 
our  complex  order  the  lives  and  actions  of  individual  men  are 
cut  across  by  various  group-interests  and  institutions  which 
water-mark  their  minds  in  ways  which  affect  the  further  fortunes 
of  ideas.  Besides  the  agencies  of  direct  concern  with  ideas  we 
must  recognize  the  educational  role  of  certain  agencies  of  in- 
direct concern,  notably  our  courts  and  our  philanthropic  agencies 
which  in  their  dealings  with  case  after  case  are  really  applying 
current  ideas  and  reinforceing  current  feeling. 

22 


From  What  Level  of  Public  Opinion  Shall  Standards 
Be  Drawn? 

Whether  he  wishes  it  or  not,  therefore,  the  modern  official 
of  a  public  philanthropy  is  an  agent  of  public  opinion.  And  the 
great  question  for  a  democratic  community  is  the  question  from 
what  level  of  public  opinion  are  its  agencies  to  take  the  quality 
of  their  ideas.  The  tradition  is  that  these  agencies  should  reflect 
the  average  standards.  Public  officials,  for  example,  have  within 
the  last  decade  reflected  a  popular  change  in  attitude  towards  the 
recipients  of  relief,  a  qualifying  of  the  pauper  stigma.  That 
both  the  older  attitude  and  the  newer  represent  the  level  of 
average  thinking  is  apparent  from  the  objective,  simple,  patent 
character  of  their  causes.  Our  colonial  forebears  had  harsh  con- 
ditions of  living.  There  was  little  surplus  wealth,  and  the 
mother  country  often  shifted  its  ne'er-do-wells  upon  the  young 
community.  Public  relief  made  itself  felt  in  the  average  citizen's 
purse  with  no  light  touch.  It  was  no  wonder  that  they  denied 
social  standing  to  one  who  had  "come  upon  the  town."  Today, 
however,  the  economic  situation  fosters  a  very  different  average 
sentiment.  The  country  is  rich;  the  community  is  so  large  that 
no  average  person  feels  the  burden  of  relief  as  such.  Moreover', 
during  periods  of  business  depression  or  of  industrial  conflict: 
numerous  families  ordinarily  self-suppK)rting  find  themselves  de-;' 
pending  on  benefits  and  relief.  It  becomes  easy  to  think  of  de-' 
pendents  as  casualties  of  an  unsettled  industrial  order,  and  the', 
average  opinion  makes  little  of  any  stigma  in  their  plight. 

Another  policy  expressive  of  average  opinion  appears  among 
those  printed  by  the  Mothers'  Aid  Department  of  Massachusetts. 
It  reads : 

"The  former  standard  of  living  of  a  family,  as  well  as  the 
standards  of  self-supporting  families  in  its  neighborhood,  should 
be  considered  in  determining  the  amount  of  aid  necessary." 

What  we  have  here  is  a  recognition  of  the  claim  of  status. 
The  family  will  not  be  adequately '  relieved  if  it  feels  its  social 
standing  unsustained.  And  the  criteria  of  social  standing,  as 
they  exist  for  the  average  opinion,  are  not  hard  for  the  relief  de- 

23 


partment  to  ascertain  and  deal  with :  they  lie  chiefly  in  such  mat- 
ters as  food,  dress,  and  living  quarters. 

The  Idea  of  Status  as  Involving  Social  Standards 

Now  if  our  relief  officers  and  other  public  agents,  when  they 
develop  policies  that  touch  such  motivating  ideas  as  this  idea  of 
status,  are  to  reflect  merely  average  opinion,  let  us  note  how 
crude,  how  objective,  and  how  barren  is  the  social  thinking  that 
they  will  unwittingly  confirm.  Popular  thinking  about  status,  if 
it  can  be  said  to  analyze  the  idea,  does  little  more  than  divide 
it  into  factors  thought  of  as  genuine  and  important  and  factors 
thought  of  as  superficial  and  trivial.  Such  factors  as  occupa- 
tional success,  education,  respect  for  business  and  family  morality 
it  treats  as  genuine  and  important.  The  values  they  represent 
obviously  coincide  with  a  man's  social  usefulness.  Such  factors 
as  dress,  manners,  speech-habits  it  regards  as  superficial  and 
trivial.  Dress  seems  little  more  than  the  uniform  of  prosperity. 
Manners,  being  in  Emerson's  phrase  "the  happy  way  of  doing 
things,"  seem  but  the  ornament  of  aristocracy — the  graces  bred 
of  leisure  and  the  drawing  room.  In  a  democracy  their  use  has 
been  described  by  Professor  E.  A.  Ross  as  that  of  a  lubricant,  the 
function  of  politeness  being  "not  to  sweeten  the  relations  of  kins- 
folk, friends,  or  lodge  brothers,  but  to  lessen  the  chafing  between 
strangers,  colleagues,  or  rivals."  Speech-habits  seem  but  sym- 
bols of  one's  habitual  nearness  to  or  remoteness  from  book- 
culture. 

The  average  opinion  about  these  matters,  then,  makes  them 
seem  of  too  little  consequence  to  draw  any  serious  concern  from 
the  social  worker.  The  public  social  agency  may  touch  them  to 
enhance,  to  deflect,  or  to  inhibit,  without  drawing  upon  itself  any 
public  notice,  whether  for  praise  or  for  blame.  But  are  these 
matters  rated  as  of  so  little  import  by  opinion  at  the  professional 
level?  Do  specialists  in  social  psychology  and  social  ethics  treat 
them  as  mere  external  graces  and  empty  symbols,  or  as  matters 
that  display  varying  drifts  towards  standards  socially  momen- 
tous?    If  the  latter  be  true,  does  the  official  worker  rise  to  the 

24 


full  measure  of  his  opportunity  for  public  service  when  he  forms 
and  administers  policies  that  merely  jog  along  with  the  general 
obtuseness  to  the  more  delicate  integrations  of  social  impulse 
such  as  make  up  the  desire  for  social  standing? 

Be  it  noted  that,  however  slighting  may  be  the  average  articu- 
late opinion  about  status,  the  average  practice  is  by  no  means 
indifferent  to  it.  Thousands  of  men  and  women  in  this  land  of 
fluid  caste-lines  are  taking  as  much  pains  to  establish  themselves 
in  appropriate  dress,  polite  manners,  and  accepted  speech-usages 
as  to  achieve  business  success.  When  they  fall  into  difficulties 
that  make  them  the  clients  of  public  philanthropy,  the  public 
official,  if  he  has  eyes  to  see,  will  see  status-motivated  situations 
at  every  turn  in  their  careers.  The  higher  possibilities  in  what 
he  is  to  do  for  them  depend  on  the  expertness,  the  liberal  enlight- 
enment of  his  dealings  with  these  social  symbols.  Dress  he  will 
recognize  not  only  as  a  symbol  of  prosperity  and  a  medium  of 
sexual  and  aesthetic  enhancement  but  as  an  aid  to  social  presenta- 
bility  and  an  opener  of  social  opportunity.  Manners  he  will  deal 
with  as  the  expression  between  people  of  a  mutual  recognition  of 
each  other's  feelings  and  claims.  They  are  conduct  in  minor 
matters,  filling  the  spaces  between  more  considered  acts,  and  are 
often  more  character-revealing  than  the  latter;  for  since  the 
occasions  of  this  minor  conduct  occur  and  pass  in  a  moment,  the 
delicacy  and  quickness  of  a  client's  behavior  are  signs  of  his 
social  sensitiveness.  Even  speech-habits  will  not  escape  atten- 
tion. It  may  seem  but  a  petty  snobbery  to  notice  when  a  client 
says  "I'm  glad  to  meet  you"  instead  of  "Pleased  to  meet  you," 
"This  is  Mr.  Jones"  instead  of  "I  want  to  make  you  acquainted 
with  Mr.  Jones."  But  the  social  worker  trained  to  note  the 
language  characteristic  of   different  social  groups* — the   differ- 

*"His  social  experience,  traditions  and  general  background,  his 
ordinary  tastes  and  pursuits,  his  intellectual  and  moral  cultivation 
are  all  reflected  in  each  man's  conversation.  These  factors  determine 
and  modify  a  man's  mode  of  speech  in  innumerable  ways.  They  may 
affect  his  pronunciation,  the  speed  of  his  utterance,  his  choice  of 
vocabulary,  the  shade  of  meaning  he  attaches  to  particular  words  or 
turns  of  phrase,  the  character  of  such  similes  and  metaphors  as  occur 
in  his  speech,  his  word  order  and  the  structure  of  his  sentences." 
— Wyld,  H.  C:  "History  Modern  Colloquial  English,  Chap.  X,  p.  359. 

25 


ences  of  social  tone  conveyed  by  enunciation  and  voice-inflections, 
by  formulae  of  greeting,  of  approval  and  disapproval,  etc.,  by 
the  familiarities  and  reticences  to  be  taken  for  granted — will 
have  clues  both  for  interpretation  and  for  treatment  of  a  client's 
case.  What  sympathy,  what  social  prevision  the  agency  can 
bring  to  bear  depends  on  the  worker's  qualification  to  discern  the 
remoter  implications  and  consequences  that  are  latent  in  these 
seemingly  small  matters.  If  he  makes  himself  responsible  to 
socially  expert  opinion,  he  will  watch  how  his  policies  affect  the 
various  factors  in  an  idea  so  dynamic  as  this  of  status.  He  will 
make  himself  responsible  for  the  future  fortunes  of  ideals,  and 
this  means  that  in  dealing  with  a  client  in  this  and  that  relation- 
ship he  will  reckon  with  the  kinds  of  approval  and  disapproval 
which  different  groups  confer,  the  factors  in  conduct  which 
these  approvals  stress,  the  qtuility  of  the  social  forces  thus  set 
afoot. 

All  this  the  public  official,  beset  with  emergent  demands  up- 
on his  attention,  can  hardly  initiate.  The  quality  of  social  forces 
can  be  assayed  only  through  careful  study.  If  the  student  suc- 
ceeds in  making  such  qualitative  distinctions  clear,  the  public 
official  can  give  his  conclusions  or  hypotheses  the  test  of  practical 
application. 

So  important  for  the  future  influence  of  social  work  is  this 
distinguishing  of  quality  in  the  formative  ideas  it  touches  that  I 
venture  to  dwell  a  little  further  on  the  idea  of  status  as  it  became 
concretely  involved  in  the  cases^  of  three  girls,  each  of  whom 
lost  standing  by  the  plight  of  unmarried  motherhood. 

The  first  girl,  Rachel,  was  Jewish.  She  was  an  immigrant 
who  came  to  this  country  in  her  latter  teens  with  her  father, 
brothers  and  sisters,  the  mother  having  died.  Her  father  was  a 
scholar  of  standing  among  his  people,  saturated  in  Talmudic 
learning,  and  orthodox  in  all  his  conceptions;  and  the  family 
settling  among  neighbors  of  their  own  race,  this  old  man  was 
held  in  high  respect.     The  girl  was  unusually  endowed  both  in 


^  These  cases  were  of  course  analyzed  and  interpreted  by  the  same 
method  as  that  advocated  throughout  this  monograph.  (See  p.  10 
and  p.  40ff.) 

26 


intelligence  and  refinement.  She  became  deeply  in  love  with  and 
expected  to  marry  a  young  man  of  Americanized  ways,  whose 
success  in  getting  an  American  education  she  and  her  family 
identified  with  superiority  of  character.  They  all  considered  that 
Rachel  was  doing  well.  When  in  the  course  of  time  it  became 
known  to  them  that  she  had  two  children  born  out  of  wedlock  to 
this  man,  the  shock  and  grief  of  the  old  father  were  beyond 
description.  Suffering  and  moral  indignation  united  to  make 
him  unrelenting.  The  children,  of  course,  he  would  not  even  see ; 
Rachel  he  kept  at  home,  meeting  her  with  reproaches  at  every 
turn  and  holding  her  sin  up  to  her  on  every  occasion.  If  she 
went  to  see  her  children,  which  she  had  to  do  by  stealth,  he  would 
ask  on  her  return  whether  she  had  been  earning  money  on  the 
street.  Her  brother  would  not  even  remain  in  the  same  room 
with  her,  and  her  brothers-in-law  felt  much  the  same  way.  Re- 
spectable families  in  the  neighborhood  forbade  their  daughters  to 
associate  with  her.  Being  too  refined  to  enjoy  the  companion- 
ship of  the  only  sort  of  girl  willing  to  be  seen  with  her,  Rachel 
was  left  entirely  without  companionship.  No  more  extreme 
punishment  can  be  conceived.  The  story  is  racially  typical,  al- 
though it  is  an  exaggeration  of  the  typical  at  certain  points. 

The  second  girl,  Molly,  was  a  New  England  Methodist  living 
in  a  little  farming  village.  The  scattered  population  was  mainly 
Yankee,  respectable  people  who  attended  the  one  church  in  the 
place.  Their  group-consciousness,  therefore,  was  a  matter  partly 
of  common  nationality,  partly  of  church  affiliation,  but  may  be 
assumed  to  have  been  less  intense  than  that  of  a  Jewish  neighbor- 
hood. Molly  and  her  family  were  distinctly  less  endowed  than 
the  Jewish  family,  their  education  being  slight,  and  the  girFs  in- 
telligence mediocre.  She  was,  however,  an  obedient,  loving 
daughter,  a  girl  whose  nature  it  apparently  was  to  conform  to 
the  standards  about  her,  and  who  was  generally  liked  and  re- 
spected. The  father  of  her  child  was  a  married  man,  rather 
forceful  in  appearance,  for  whom  she  felt  affection.  In  this  in- 
stance it  was  an  old  mother  on  whom  fell  the  shock  and  sorrow, 
a  self-denying  devoted  parent.  For  months  after  learning 
Molly's  condition  this  mother  was  distracted.     At  first  her  dread 

27 


was  lest  the  neighbors  learn  the  disgrace,  because,  as  she  said, 
no  such  terrible  thing  had  ever  happened  in  that  village  before. 
Her  dread  proved  justified.  After  the  neighbors  had  learned  the 
situation  and  during  the  daughter's  period  of  confinement,  this 
woman  for  two  or  three  months  was  visited  by  none  of  the 
neighbors,  and  week  after  week  saw  no  living  creature  except  the 
grocer  and  postman  once  a  week,  a  pet  cat  and  a  neighbor's  dog 
that  had  been  accustomed  to  visit  the  house.  Later  the  clergy- 
man showed  sympathy  and  understanding;  so  sure  was  he,  how- 
ever, that  the  village  people  would  ostracize  the  family  that  he 
lirged  their  leaving  their  home  and  moving  to  another  city.  He 
described  his  parishioners  as  kind-hearted  and  friendly  but  as 
feeling  strongly  about  wrong-doing.  Against  his  advice  the  old 
mother  clung  to  her  home  and  received  into  it  her  daughter  and 
baby.  What  humiliation  may  have  been  borne  by  these  two 
women  we  do  not  know.  We  do  know  that  Molly,  who  is  of  a 
mild  and  pleasing  disp>osition,  won  her  way  back  into  the  good 
opinion  of  her  neighbors,  and  that  she  and  her  child  were  both  in 
time  received  into  the  church. 

The  third  girl,  Janice,  was  an  American  of  good  ability  who 
grew  up  in  a  moderate-sized  city  in  what  is  called  an  American 
neighborhood — that  is,  among  English-speaking  people  whose 
racial  extraction  may  or  may  not  have  been  the  same.  The 
neighborhood  as  such  had  no  group  life.  The  people  were  split 
up  among  different  churches;  certain  of  them  found  a  tie  with 
their  fellows  through  the  Grange.  Otherwise  families  living  near 
each  other  had  merely  chance  friends  here  and  there.  Since  the 
family  of  the  girl  in  question  were  self-centered  people  whose 
church  connection  was  nominal  and  who  were  not  members  of 
the  Grange,  they  were  quite  detached  from  any  socialized  life. 
Yet  apparently  they  had  a  regard  for  outward  res|>ectability 
which  suggests  that  they  sensed  collective  requirements  for  status 
either  in  their  neighborhood  or  in  a  vaguely  felt  public  outside. 
Their  house,  which  was  on  a  street  with  stable  working  people, 
was  always  kept  painted  and  in  better  repair  than  those  about. 
The  family  were  clean  and  made  a  good  apj>earance  personally 
and  in  their  conversation.     This  is  noteworthy  because  their  his- 

28 


tory  behind  scenes  shows  them  to  have  been  people  whose  con- 
ception of  the  sex  relation  was  matter-of-fact  and  thoroughly- 
coarse.  The  daughter's  misconduct  insofar  as  it  was  unnotice- 
able  by  others  did  not  appear  to  affect  them  as  a  very  serious  de- 
parture from  standards.  Janice  herself  had  a  chequered  youth. 
As  to  the  paternity  of  her  child  she  was  uncertain  as  between  two 
men  for  neither  of  whom  she  had  any  sentiment  other  than  a 
friendly  liking.  Yet  she,  like  her  family,  had  a  regard  for  out- 
ward respectability.  Indeed  this  trait  became  evident  as  a  dis- 
tinct impulse  to  identify  herself  with  a  group  superior  to  her  own. 
It  was  not  that  she  had  come  in  contact  with  any  special  set  of 
which  she  wished  to  be  one ;  it  apj>eared  rather  as  if  she  had  an 
undefined  notion  of  the  existence  of  desirably  placed  people  who 
possessed  the  symbols  of  superior  status.  She  took  pains  with 
her  dress  partly  because  she  recognized  that  good  clothes  might 
enlarge  her  opportunities  of  attracting  men  of  better  social  posi- 
tion than  her  own ;  she  cultivated  the  personal  refinement  of  care- 
fully tended  hands,  of  gentle  manners ;  she  was  offended  if  in- 
vited to  a  cheap  restaurant  and  became  gracious  and  amiable 
when  taken  to  a  modish  one.  In  short  she  had  the  makings  of  a 
social  climber. 

If  the  agency  dealing  with  these  cases  reflected  nothing  more 
than  the  average  opinion  upon  them,  what  discrimination  of  any 
import  would  it  display?  Average  opinion  would  have  some- 
thing to  say  about  the  individual  girls  by  way  of  conventional 
appraisal  of  their  characters.  It  would  note  the  intelligence  and 
refinement  of  Rachel,  the  fact  that  her  misdoing  was  with  a  man 
she  loved  and  expected  to  marry;  it  would  note  the  amiable 
pliability  of  Molly,  the  shallowness  of  Janice.  If  it  looked  at  all 
beyond  the  individual  girl,  it  would  stop  with  the  immediate 
family  group,  contenting  itself  here  with  an  impressionistic  rating 
of  the  family  respectability.  But  the  quality  of  that  respectabil- 
ity, the  degree  to  which  the  family  group  mirrors  ideals  and 
standards  that  are  the  social  contribution  of  larger  groups — of 
all  this  the  average  thought  would  miss  the  significance. 

Yet  these  cases  surely  invite  attention  to  social  forces,  to 
social  valuations  of  far-reaching  concern.     The  case  of  Rachel 

29 


involved  first  the  Jewish  respect  for  learning.  Her  misplaced 
confidence  in  the  young  man  was  an  overrating — which  her 
family  shared — of  the  social  worth  of  his  American  education. 
Being  unfamihar  with  the  educational  standards  and  the  tokens 
of  social  integrity  in  a  new  country,  they  imputed  to  him  more 
gentlemanly  implications  of  scholarship  than  he  deserved. 
Rachel's  case  involved  a  further  point  of  social  moment.  The 
bitterness,  even  cruelty  of  her  father  would  be  imperfectly  un- 
derstood if  one  failed  to  view  the  family  in  its  relation  to  the 
Jewish  community  before  which  the  father  stood  as  an  exponent 
of  tradition.  The  religious  tradition  of  Israel,  with  its  Messianic 
hope,  has  carried  a  promise,  shared  by  each  humble  man  and 
woman,  that  from  them  might  spring  a  great  spiritual  leader  for 
their  people.  Whether  literally  held  as  a  faith  or  not,  such  a 
tradition  has  fostered  a  dim  emotional  appreciation  of  the  infinite 
collective  consequences  of  the  act  of  procreation — an  act  other- 
wise so  easily  thought  of  as  of  merely  private  import.  The 
agency  dealing  with  this  Jewish  girl  could  not  realize  its  full 
possibilities  of  influence  without  a  sympathetic  sense  of  the  quality 
of  the  social  status  that  was  here  violated. 

The  case  of  Molly  involved  the  social  sanctions  which  an 
evangelical  Methodism  carried  in  a  scattered  farming  community. 
The  tradition  here  harks  back  to  John  Wesley's  preaching  of  re- 
demption, of  sin  as  the  forfeiting  of  one's  standing  before  God, 
with  the  consequence  of  exclusion  from  God's  ideal  community 
in  the  hereafter.  Such  a  tradition  is  perhaps  more  congenial  to 
the  Yankee  individualism  of  these  farm  folk,  in  that  it  stresses 
the  consequences  of  the  sinful  act  as  falling  upon  the  individual, 
and  postpones  the  realizing  of  its  collective  ideals  to  a  life  beyond. 
Yet  even  here  a  sense  of  the  collective  stake  in  the  sinful  act  is 
latent,  and  in  such  a  situation  as  Molly's  would  count  for  good  if 
tactfully  brought  into  play. 

The  case  of  Janice  involved  the  problem — ever  present  in  a 
democratic  society — of  putting  the  aspiration  and  consciousness 
of  caste  upon  a  valid  basis.  In  an  aristocratic  society  of  the 
simpler  old-fashioned  type  caste  was  not  a  serious  disturber  of 

30 


social  valuations.  The  landholding  families  at  the  top,  mellowed 
by  generations  of  undisputed  privilege,  used  their  position  and 
wealth  with  some  sense  of  noblesse  oblige.  They  enjoyed  at 
least  a  presumption  that  the  outward  embellishments  of  high 
living  were  but  the  appropriate  marks  of  a  superior  strain  in 
their  nature.  If  their  embellishments  were  copied  by  the  newly 
rich,  who  missed  their  inner  graces  of  dignity  and  delicacy,  the 
authentic  exemplars  nevertheless  continued  in  the  public  eye  for 
comparison  and  correction,  and  their  place  in  the  general  regard 
was  not  usurped  by  expensive  imitations.  In  America  of  today 
there  is  no  such  ease  of  identification  in  the  marks  of  social 
worth.  We  have  no  aristocratic  caste  whose  graces  would  com- 
mand a  semi-official  recognition  as  the  tokens  of  gentility.  In  its 
place  we  have  several  groups  whose  position  is  socially  esteemed. 
Diverse  in  their  occupations — financial,  professional,  artistic — 
they  do  not  unite  to  present  a  clear  front  against  pretentious 
shams.  Meanwhile  the  near-genteel  groups,  people  whose 
crudity  of  appetite  and  poverty  of  interest  are  easily  overlooked 
amid  their  unrivalled  upholstery,  get  for  their  tastes  and  stand- 
ards a  continuous  publicity  through  the  Sunday  supplements  and 
the  movies.  To  a  girl  who,  like  Janice,  had  taken  her  social 
education  from  these  sources,  there  was  nothing  incongruous  be- 
tween her  family's  eager  concern  with  comeliness  in  all  their 
outward  show  and  their  grossness  in  treating  the  sexual  relation 
as  a  matter  merely  of  transient  personal  indulgence.  Here  was  a 
case  for  re-education  of  one  whose  social  training  was  utterly 
amiss. 

Briefly  as  I  have  been  obliged  to  sketch  these  cases,  I  have 
mentioned  enough  to  suggest  first  that  the  public  official,  in  deal- 
ing with  the  actual  individual,  is  working  at  the  only  point  where 
social  values  can  be  concretely  grasped,  and  secondly,  that  these 
values  are  to  be  more  sharply  identified  and  practically  influ- 
enced through  the  client's  group  relationships.  The  individual 
is  the  string  on  which  all  social  overtones  come  into  being,  but 
the  group  is  the  sounding-board  by  which  they  gain  poignancy 
and  power. 

31 


i  Policies  Carry  Sanctions  for  Social  Ideas 

The  practical  drift  of  all  this  concern  with  ideas  will  grow 
apparent  to  the  public  worker  as  he  finds  that  his  policies  are 
bound  to  act  as  sanctions  for  ideas.  Here  is  a  mother  seeking 
relief.  She  is  a  clever  manager :  she  makes  over  and  cooks  over 
with  tireless  care  and  resourcefulness,  and  she  thereby  clothes 
and  feeds  her  brood  on  less  than  will  keep  any  neighbor  going. 
By  what  idea  of  fitness  should  her  relief  be  gauged?  The  safe 
and  easy  idea  would  be  to  equalize  her  present  comfort  with  her 
neighbor's  comfort  by  a  dole  below  any  neighbors'  minimum  de- 
mand. A  more  enlightened  idea  would  be  to  equalize  the  relief 
with  the  neighbors'  minimum  and  let  her  good  management  reap 
a  little  reward  in  a  bettered  standard  of  living.  Such  a  question 
rises  many  times  in  dealing  with  foreign  mothers — with  people 
said  to  live  on  ''next  to  nothing."  Is  the  maximum  ambition  that 
we  are  able  to  recognize  in  the  immigrant  the  urge  to  keep  to- 
gether body  and  soul?  If  the  public  practice  answers  yes  to  this 
question,  we  are  giving  official  sanction  to  the  idea  that  peasants 
shall  stay  peasants  for  all  we  care.  For  better  or  for  worse  such 
official  sanctions  of  formative  ideas  are  at  work  in  the  lives  of 
our  clients  and  of  their  groups.  They  blur  or  sharpen  the  con- 
duct-patterns— habitual  modes  of  behavior  in  clients  and  their 
groups — by  which  our  social  standards  are  realized.  What  we 
need  is  courage  and  skill  to  bring  all  available  sanctions  to  bear 
upon  a  socially  formative  idea,  especially  where  its  consequences 
are  too  remote  and  inconspicuous  to  enlist  a  spontaneous  group 
endorsement.  Even  unchastity  will  become  an  almost  tractable 
evil  when  we  can  once  underwrite  the  law's  restraint  with  so- 
ciety's all-compelling  formula:  "It  isn't  done." 


32 


CHAPTER  III 

A  FUTURE  FUNCTION  OF  PRIVATE  AGENCIES 

The  discussion  of  social  status  or  standing  was  used  in  the 
preceding  chapter  to  illustrate  the  opportunity  for  public  officials 
to  bring  enlightened  insight  to  bear  in  their  work.  The  concep- 
tion of  status  there  broached  sprang  from  a  comparative  study 
of  certain  similar  groups  of  fact-items  which  stood  out  in  a 
number  of  social  case  histories  analyzed  by  the  Research  Bureau. 
These  groups  of  items  kept  recurring,  with  social  status  indicated 
as  their  meaning,  and  between  them  suggestive  resemblances  and 
differences  began  to  appear.  The  notion  of  a  desire  for  status  as 
a  social  force  promises  to  lead  along  fruitful  lines  of  thought  and 
to  have  a  bearing  on  several  questions  of  major  concern.  Certain 
ideas  fundamental  to  the  discussion  of  this  "force"  may  throw 
light  on  so  apparently  unrelated  a  subject  as  the  division  of  func- 
tion between  public  and  private  agencies  for  social  case  work. 

The  Bearing  Upon  This  Question  of  the  Function  of 
Agencies  Other  Than  Social 

The  question  as  to  a  workable  division  of  function  between 
public  and  private  social  agencies  has  undergone  so  much  fruit- 
less rehashing  that  an  enlargement  of  its  scope  to  include  the 
function  of  other  than  the  so-called  "social  work"  agencies  may 
serve  to  fertilize  reflection.  What  division  between  public  and 
private  effort  in  general  seems  to  exist? 

A  review  of  the  range  of  responsibility  placed  by  legislatures 
upK)n  public  departments  of  various  sorts  shows  that  in  the  main 
their  statutory  duties  parallel  such  social  needs  as  involve  the 
most  immediate  and  conspicuous  consequences.  The  conse- 
quences of  a  neglect  of  public  defence  or  of  the  maintenance  of 
order  are  evident  to  the  most  sluggish  mind ;  those  of  neglect  of 
highway  upkeep  are  today  almost  equally  so;  whereas  the  end- 
results  of  public  health  activities,  bank  inspection,  public  educa- 
tion, factory  inspection,  and  so  on  represent  a  progressively  in- 

33 


creasing  demand  upon  social  imagination.  There  must  be  a 
manifestness  in  public  needs  in  order  to  stir  citizens  collectively 
to  deal  with  them.  When  the  benefits  that  would  follow  col- 
lective action  are  less  conspicuous,  even  though  equally  far-reach- 
ing— ^as  in  the  case  of  baby  hygiene — public  interest  is  sluggish 
and  a  few  citizens  of  more  social  imagination  must  fill  the  breach 
through  privately  endowed  enterprise.  Furthermore,  among  the 
duties  placed  upon  the  public  departments  those  covering  fields  in 
which  the  consequences  of  a  disregard  for  social  interest  are  the 
most  obvious  are  likely  in  the  long  run  to  be  best  performed. 

A  case  in  point  will  be  found  in  the  field  of  law-enforcing 
agencies.  Some  laws  are  evidently  more  easy  to  enforce  than 
are  others.  Why  is  it?  The  facile  answer  is  that  public  opinion 
is  solidly  behind  one  law  and  is  more  or  less  divided  on  another. 
While  this  of  course  is  true,  may  we  not  go  one  step  further  and 
ask  why  it  is  that  public  opinion — at  least  a  formidable  minority 
opinion — fails  to  rally  behind  certain  laws  whose  intent  is  clearly 
beneficent,  laws,  for  example,  against  the  social  evil  and  gambling, 
and  notably  the  Volstead  Act?  The  answer  appears  to  be  that 
many  citizens  do  not  see  any  clear  consequences  of  the  proscribed 
conduct  which  will  affect  social  well-being.  They  think  of  it  as 
lying  in  the  realm  of  manners  or  of  sectarian  codes  rather  than 
in  that  of  socially  responsible  behavior.  According  to  this 
opinion  manners,  morals,  and  actions  responsible  to  the  law  seem 
things  differing  in  kind,  manners  and  morals  being  thought  of  as 
mainly  personal,  actions  before  the  law  alone  as  properly  subject 
to  a  social  concern.  Actually  the  three  differ  rather  in  the  im- 
manence and  obviousness  of  the  collective  stake  in  them:  minor 
conduct,  viewed  in  any  longer  social  vista,  often  attaining  a  major 
import.  Where  the  collective  stake  is  neither  immanent  nor  ob- 
vious, where  average  opinion  does  not  feel  that  the  conduct  in 
question  really  injures  other  citizens,  men  who  indulge  in  it  will 
not  lose  social  status  even  when  their  conduct  actually  infringes 
the  law.  Disregard  for  law  on  the  part  of  men  who  nevertheless 
maintain  excellent  standing,  men  who  in  other  resj>ects  are  law- 
abiding,  is  presumptive  evidence  that  the  law  itself  lacks  "prac- 

34 


ticality,"  that  it  fails  to  take  account  of  some  important  factor  in 
the  actual  situation. 

That  factor,  in  such  laws  as  those  instanced,  lies  in  the  con- 
flict they  occasion  with  the  pleasure-habits,  or  habits  of  relaxa- 
tion, that  have  been  formed  by  thousands  of  average  people. 
They  bear  upon  men  who  in  their  youth  make  part  of  the  social 
evil,  and  upon  men  who  have  stocked  cellars  or  carry  hip-flasks, 
yet  who  work  steadily,  live  up  to  current  business  standards,  sup- 
port and  educate  their  children,  and  even  manifest  public  spirit. 
One  must  recognize  degrees  in  wrongdoing.  Were  a  craving 
for  irresponsible  excitement  always  carried  to  gross  extremes, 
the  social  or  drink  evil  would  be  easy  to  combat.  The  dreadful 
and  dramatic  price  paid  in  degradation  and  in  the  suffering  of 
the  families  of  a  sot  or  a  roue,  if  it  always  or  usually  accom- 
panied indulgence,  would  be  a  warning  which  only  the  dull  would 
fail  to  heed.  But  such  an  outcome,  athough  frequent,  is  not 
the  rule.  The  moderate  pleasure-habits  of  men  and  women  who 
while  confessing  them  to  be  unideal  yet  find  in  them  relief  from 
fatiguing  routine  or  concentration  are  habits  that  have  a  social 
effect  of  which  the  harmfulness  is  quite  imperceptible  to  the 
average  view.  These  citizens,  moreover,  outnumber  many  times 
those  who  fall  into  depravity.  It  is  to  this  fact  that  one  must 
look  for  an  explanation  of  the  unenforcements  under  discussion. 

The  Need  for  a  Study  of  Public  Sensitiveness  to 
Consequences 

What  is  here  needed  is  a  study  of  the  sensitiveness  to  con- 
sequences in  the  public  mind.  The  average  man  has  some  notion 
of  a  collective  stake  in  any  personal  indulgence  which  is  overt  and 
annoying.  Exactly  why  has  he  so  imperfect  a  sense  of  harms 
that  develop  cumulatively  and  at  several  removes?  The  answer 
is  to  be  found  in  the  group-sanctioned  habits  that  condition  his 
thinking.  Evidently  then,  it  must  be  the  function  of  some 
agency,  whether  public  or  private,  to  make  systematic  additions 
to  our  understanding  of  that  vague  welter  of  ideas  and  habits 
that  we  call  "public  opinion."     All  processes  of  social  betterment 

35 


are  ultimately  processes  among  the  conduct-patterns  and  situa- 
tions that  either  further  or  retard  progressive  thinking.  What 
is  usually  needed  is  not  propaganda  for  moral  ends.  Upon  ends 
there  is  little  real  disagreement.  What  we  need  is  socially  valid 
means;  and  the  validity  of  any  means  by  which  average  people 
are  to  clarify  their  thinking  about  causes  and  consequences  de- 
pends on  the  soundness  of  our  knowledge  of  average  habits, 
codes,  and  sentiments.  As  John  Dewey  has  remarked,  "Unless 
ideals  are  to  be  dreams  and  idealism  a  synonym  for  romanticism 
and  phantasy-building,  there  must  be  a  most  realistic  study  of 
actual  conditions  and  of  the  mode  or  law  of  natural  events,  in 
order  to  give  the  imagined  or  ideal  object  definite  form  and  solid 
substance — to  give  it,  in  short,  practicality  and  constitute  it  a 
working  end."^ 

At  present  no  agency  of  any  kind,  whether  public  or  private, 
is  responsibly  charged  with  the  function  of  advancing  this  sort  of 
social  understanding.  As  among  case-work  agencies  the  prevail- 
ing idea  of  a  division  of  function  is  this :  that  private  agencies  are 
to  experiment,  to  deal  with  needs  of  which  the  social  import  is 
unknown  or  uncertain,  and  that  public  agencies  are  to  take  over 
the  concern  with  needs  of  which  the  social  import  has  become 
generally  recognized.  Private  agencies  may  demonstrate  the 
need  for  school  visitors.  Once  the  need  for  school  visitors  has 
been  proved,  the  public  may  authorize  school  boards  to  employ 
them.  Private  agencies  are  to  set  and  maintain  standards,  to 
make  evident  and  to  keep  before  the  public  the  social  benefit  of  a 
progressive  refinement  of  care  for  persons  in  need.  They  under- 
take to  individualize  "case  work"  instead  of  merely  to  distribute 
relief  doles.  Public  agencies  will  then  adopt  the  standards  there- 
by set.  They  will  individualize  their  care  of  applicants  in  so  far 
as  the  pubic  can  be  brought  to  pay  for  it. 

In  this  current  idea  of  the  role  of  private  agencies  there  is 
nothing  to  conflict  with  a  proposal  to  enlarge  their  function  by 
turning  their  social  observations  to  scientific  account.  Leaders  in 
other  fields  of  public  responsibility  are  ready  to  draw  upon  their 


^  "Human  Nature  and  Conduct,"  p.  236. 

36 


experience.^  And  the  nature  of  their  work  makes  their  experi- 
ence such  as  can  readily  be  turned  to  theoretical  profit.  The 
private  case-worker,  moving  among  the  daily  activities  of  average 
people,  is  advantageously  placed  to  observe  the  standard-forming 
processes  of  habit  and  circumstance. 

The  Change  of  Appeal  With  Change  of  Function 

Such  an  enlargement  of  function  for  the  private  agency  will 
of  course  involve  a  change  of  appeal  in  its  work.  Here  lies  a 
real  difficulty.  Privately  supported  agencies  are  under  the  con- 
stant necessity  of  keeping  their  boards  of  directors  and  their  body 
of  contributors  interested.  In  selecting  cases  for  care  they  must 
therefore  take  this  into  account.  Directors  are  apt  to  become  dis- 
couraged by  the  prospect  of  assisting  families  or  children  that  in- 
volve long-continued  expense  or  that  give  scant  promise  of  a 
successful  outcome  of  care.  They  prefer  "temporary"  situations 
which  can  be  adjusted  within  a  reasonably  short  time,  and  which 
will  therefore  admit  of  their  assuming  responsibility  for  a  larger 
number  of  families.  The  larger  number  together  with  a  fortu- 
nate outcome  make  the  best  appeal  to  contributors.  As  one  gen- 
eral secretary  said,  "We  raise  money  on  our  successes." 

Natural  as  is  this  concern  for  numbers  and  outcome,  it  is 
likely  to  conflict  with  a  concern  for  the  wider  social  import  in 
the  cases  chosen.  Fortunately  the  lack  of  this  wider  concern 
promises  to  bring  its  own  cure.  Discontent  with  the  trend  of 
private  case-work  agencies  is  appearing  among  young  workers. 
It  is  expressed  in  such  words  as  "case  work  has  no  vision,"  "social 
work  does  not  get  anywhere,"  "agencies  do  not  know  what  they 
are  aiming  at."  The  meaning  of  this  attitude,  unspoken  because 
it  might  sound  inhumane,  is  a  dissatisfaction  over  spending  so 


*  "In  order  to  construct  a  scheme  of  social  interests  that  will  serve 
the  jurisprudence  of  tomorrow  as  the  thoroughly  elaborated  schemes 
of  natural  rights  served  the  jurisprudence  of  yesterday,  the  social 
sciences  must  co-operate." — Roscoe  Pound;  Harvard  Law  Review, 
February,  1915,  p.  345.  Any  study,  for  example,  of  the  factors  that 
enter  into  the  unenforceability  of  law,  would  involve  the  combined 
qualifications  of  lawyers  and  social  students  applied  to  the  data  afforded 
by  a  number  of  unenforced  laws. 

37 


much  energy  on  an  unending  succession  of  cases  many  of  which 
are  only  moderately  hopeful,  and  each  of  which  is  dealt  with  one 
by  one,  as  if  it  had  no  bearing  on  any  others.  It  is,  in  short,  an 
indication  that  we  are  moving  away  from  the  thought  of  cases  of 
need  in  their  individual  aspect  to  a  conception  that  they  have  im- 
fvortant  typical  aspects  not  yet  identified. 

This  dissatisfaction  with  an  old  point  of  view  has  recurred 
in  the  development  of  social  work.  Roughly,  one  might  speak  of 
three  phases  in  social  work:  The  first  a  period  of  unorganized 
benevolence,  the  second  a  period  during  which  organization  has 
developed,  the  third  the  period  into  which  we  are  just  emerging. 
The  second  period  has  given  us  methods  of  organization  which 
have  been  tested  out  for  different  kinds  of  agency — child-placing, 
family  welfare,  etc. — has  established  such  agencies  in  all  parts  of 
the  country,  and  has  also  given  us  a  technique  of  case  work — 
altogether  a  very  creditable  showing.  The  routine  procedure  of 
this  case  work  is  based  on  a  preoccupation  with  the  individual 
needs  of  the  clients.  During  the  last  few  years,  however,  the 
influence  of  schools  of  social  work  and  of  sociologists  has  been 
pressing  us  toward  a  different  conception  of  case  work  and  of 
the  function  of  private  agencies.  We  are  beginning  to  think  of  a 
future  in  which  the  concern  with  cases  of  need,  while  no  less 
humane  and  sympathetic  on  the  individual  side,  will  stress  the 
typical  or  social  aspects  of  these  cases,  and  in  which  case-work 
agencies — at  any  rate  in  the  larger  cities  and  in  places  where 
public  authorities  do  fair  work — will  gradually  become  what  may 
be  described  as  social  laboratories.  Since  private  agencies,  be- 
cause of  limited  funds,  must  perforce  select  their  cases,  enlight- 
ened opinion  will  back  them  up  in  selecting  on  such  a  basis  that 
the  study  of  these  cases  will  yield  a  more  explicit  understanding 
of  social  ills  than  we  can  get  at  present. 

This  means  that  an  agency  would  accept  for  care  some 
typical  group  of  case  problems — a  group  of  unmarried  mothers 
from  broken  homes,  a  group  of  borderline  feeblemined  boys,  and 
so  on.  Study  of  these  cases  would  go  on  simultaneously  with 
treatment.  Such  case  work  with  its  accompanying  research 
should  gradually  give  to  our  discussion  of  causative  factors  and 

38 


of  constructive  social  measures  an  explicitness  inevitably  wanting 
at  present.  "Broken  homes,"  for  example,  is  a  recognized  factor 
in  delinquency  of  girls  and  we  take  it  unquestioningly  as  an  ex- 
planation. Yet  we  know  many  broken  homes  in  which  girls 
grow  up  resf>ectably.  What  is  it  in  certain  instances  of  them 
that  makes  mischief  ?  What  are  the  social  values  missed  by  this 
or  that  girl,  and  why  does  the  lack  of  those  values  work  just  as 
it  does  ?  Are  all  broken  homes  alike  in  the  values  missed  or  are 
there  instructive  differences  between  them  ?  Since  broken  homes 
appear  in  all  walks  of  life,  the  answers  to  such  questions  will  have 
a  general  interest. 

Another  problem  which  ultimately  may  be  a  public  responsi- 
bility but  which  in  the  meantime  calls  for  the  flexible  experiment- 
ing of  private  effort  is  the  extramural  supervision  of  the  high- 
grade  or  borderline  feebleminded.  The  types  of  persons  so 
handicapped  who  can  be  successfully  kept  in  the  community,  the 
kind  of  environmental  protection  they  need,  the  methods  and  cost 
of  supervising  their  lives  could  all  be  privately  tried  out.  When 
or  if  this  experiment  brought  the  legislature  to  give  public  authori- 
ties duties  of  oversight,  the  successes  and  failures  privately  met 
would  enable  them  to  install  methods  of  care  faster  and  with  surer 
effectiveness.  Such  cases,  involving  the  social  treatment  of  de- 
fective clients,  are  of  just  the  long-continued,  unpromising  sort 
to  discourage  boards  of  directors  when  they  are  dealt  with  merely 
as  individuals.  If  agencies,  however,  think  of  them  as  also  mem- 
bers of  a  typical  group,  the  systematic  comparative  study  of 
which  will  throw  light  on  maladjustments  or  problems  common 
to  mankind,  directors  and  case  workers  alike  will  feel  their 
efforts  worth  while,  even  when  their  cases  show  a  disheartening 
succession  of  individual  misfortunes. 


39 


CHAPTER  IV 

SOCIAL  CASE  INTERPRETATION  FOR  RESEARCH 

Probably  all  workers  in  the  more  progressive  case-work 
agencies  believe  that  the  histories  of  assisted  individuals,  of 
which  they  make  written  records  covering  months  or  years  of 
oversight,  ought  to  be  available  for  research  purposes.  They 
recognize  that  these  documents  have  a  social  usefulness.  They 
believe  that  were  the  observations  and  experience  of  the  case 
worker  in  her  "individualized'*  treatment  of  one  instance  of  need 
after  another  correlated  with  those  of  other  workers  they  might 
contribute  to  the  integrated  insight  of  social  science,  and  in  turn 
draw  confirmations  of  her  treatment  methods  that  should  mark 
progress  in  her  professional  thinking. 

Various  attempts  thus  to  correlate  the  material  in  case  his- 
tories have  been  made  with  greater  or  less  success.  Studies 
which  have  aimed  at  a  simple  sort  of  statistical  showing  have 
served  a  practical  purpose  by  keeping  boards  of  directors  in  touch 
with  an  agency's  work  or  by  presenting  to  possible  contributors 
the  more  objective  sort  of  social  needs.  Studies,  however,  whose 
worth  has  depended  upon  the  validity  of  interpretations  to  be 
given  to  complex  social  facts  have  been  of  more  doubtful  relia- 
bility and  service. 

There  are  two  reasons  why  the  latter  sort  of  study  does  not 
get  far.  The  first  is  that  social  case  workers  and  students  who 
deal  with  the  histories  of  maladjusted  men  and  women,  when 
they  come  to  interpreting  these  facts  lose  sight  of  the  true  nature 
of  "interpretation"  or  "diagnosis" ;  the  second,  which  perhaps 
springs  out  of  the  first,  is  that  case  workers  express  their  diag- 
noses without  the  precision  necessary  for  science. 

The  Nature  of  Case  Interpretation 

Interpretation  or  diagnosis  is  the  discovery  of  cause-effect 
relations  among  fact-items  which  taken  separately  are  without 
relevance  to  any  purpose,  but  which  as  causally  related  to  each 

40 


other  bear  a  special  total  import.  The  following  illustrations 
show  fact-items  grouped  under  the  meanings  that  spring  out  of 
their  relations : 

Filial  distrust. 

Winifred  found  through  neighbors  that  confidences  she 
had  made  to  her  stepmother  were  being  repeated.  Her  step- 
mother was  disloyal  to  her  individually  and  as  part  of  the 
family.  Winifred's  sister  said  that  stepmother  told  neigh- 
bors details  of  Winifred's  early  misconduct,  and  about  the 
personal  affairs  of  her  other  stepchildren.  It  would  not  do 
to  tell  her  father  of  her  present  trouble,  because  he  would 
tell  his  wife  and  she  would  repeat  the  story  outside. 

Maternal-sexual  conflict, 

Ida  kept  her  child  against  the  opposition  of  her  family, 
remaining  in  a  wet-nurse  position  with  it  for  ten  months.  A 
month  or  two  later  her  standards  for  the  baby's  care  slack- 
ened, her  devotion  became  spasmodic.  She  kept  it  clean  and 
would  make  sacrifices  to  get  clothes  for  it,  but  did  not  want 
to  give  up  her  pleasures  with  men.  She  went  off  with  a 
girl  friend  for  several  days,  trusting  her  baby  to  the  foster 
mother.  On  her  return  she  neither  looked  at  the  child  nor 
inquired  about  him,  leaving  the  house  immediately  with  a 
man  acquaintance.  As  she  left  she  asked  the  foster  mother 
casually  "everything  all  right?" 

Spontaneous  paternal  responsibility. 

When  the  alleged  father  knew  of  the  existence  of  Mary's 
child  he  acknowledged  it  at  once  and  was  willing  to  support 
it.  He  agreed  to  pay  $4.00  a  week,  and  has  paid  it  regularly 
for  three  years.  He  asked  to  see  the  child  and  would  have 
liked  to  take  it  to  bring  up  with  his  legitimate  children. 

The  meaning  for  a  diagnosis  of  Winifred's  case  is  here 
phrased  as  filial  distrust ;  of  Ida's,  as  maternal-sexual  conflict ;  of 
Mary's,  as  spontaneous  paternal  responsibility.  The  alleged  dis- 
loyalty of  the  stepmother  "caused"  distrust  in  Winifred,  and  this 
in  turn  "caused"  her  to  be  reticent  with  her  father.  Ida's  affec- 
tion for  her  child  and  her  liking  for  men  "caused"  a  conflict  of 
interest.  The  alleged  father's  sense  of  responsibility  "caused"  his 
willingness  to  support  Mary's  child  and  his  offer  to  take  it.     The 

41 


groups  of  facts  in  these  illustrations  are  knit  together  so  closely 
that  their  meaning  seems  almost  a  part  of  them.  Taken  by  it- 
self, any  one  faot-item  in  any  of  these  illustrations  would  miss 
clearness  of  significance.  The  item  "Winifred  found  through 
neighbors  that  confidences  she  had  made  to  her  stepmother  were 
being  repeated"  might  mean  that  Winifred  was  so  loose  a  talker 
that  she  habitually  let  out  secrets  without  realizing  it.  The  item 
"when  the  alleged  father  knew  of  the  existence  of  Mary's  child, 
he  acknowledged  it  at  once  and  was  willing  to  support  it"  might 
have  meant  the  momentary  response  of  the  man  of  easy  promises. 
The  causal  relevance  of  every  fact-item  that  is  mentioned  consti- 
tutes its  sole  claim  upon  the  student's  attention. 

Starting  with  a  hazy  notion  of  the  nature  of  diagnosis,  the 
actual  interpretations  of  facts  made  by  the  case  worker  in  the 
course  of  her  daily  practice  are  apt  to  be  impressionistic.  They 
may  be  a  summarizing  of  outstanding  fact-items  in  a  given  case, 
a  list  of  what  appear  to  be  the  causative  factors,  or  a  mixture 
of  outstanding  fact-items,  of  causative  factors,  and  of  meanings 
attributed  to  these  items  and  factors.  As  a  rule,  no  formal 
method  is  followed  in  getting  at  these  quasi-interpretations  of  a 
client's  difficulty.  It  may  be  done  by  the  worker  who  knows  the 
client,  or  it  may  be  done  in  conference  between  several  i>ersons 
who  know  different  aspects  of  the  problem  or  situation  discussed. 
In  either  case,  the  analysis  of  evidence  which  precedes  it  is  of  a 
very  sketchy  sort.  For  experienced  workers  such  looseness  of 
intellectual  procedure  proves  roughly  adequate  so  far  as  an  under- 
standing of  the  immediate  situation  of  the  client  is  concerned, 
and  when  his  problem  is  a  simple  one,  may  "size  up"  the  require- 
ments for  continued  care.  Yet  the  impressionistic  and  often 
casual  character  of  this  diagnosing  means,  as  an  examination  of 
case  histories  will  show,  that  agencies  run  a  risk  of  not  getting 
the  full  meaning  and  perspective  of  the  facts  which  their  work- 
ers have  gone  to  the  pains  of  collecting.  For  the  purposes  of 
scientific  study  a  diagnosis  that  consists  merely  of  a  loose  sum- 
marizing of  facts  is  entirely  unfruitful. 

A  correlative  result  of  unsystematic  interpreting  is  that 
social  case-work  agencies  fail  to  recognize  recurrence  in  conduct 

42 


and  situation  except  in  an  ill-defined  way.  This  is  evidenced  by 
the  fact  that  they  have  but  few  and  hazy  diagnostic  terms.  Such 
terms  as  "unmarried  mother,"  "dependent  mother,"  "non-sup- 
port case,"  "neglected  child,"  etc.,  etc.,  are  all  blanket  words  for 
recurring  maladjustments,  each  of  which  shows  important  typical 
variations  not  yet  identified  with  sufficient  clearness  to  bring  forth 
appropriate  descriptive  names.  There  are  many  unnamed  types 
of  unmarried  mothers,  dependent  mothers,  neglected  child  cases. 
This  poverty  and  vagueness  of  nomenclature  both  spring  from 
and  occasion  a  vagueness  of  thought. 

The  student  of  case  histories  must  do  what  the  agencies, 
designed  for  the  prompt  relief  of  need,  cannot  stop  to  do:  he 
must  develop  a  method  that  promises  steady  advance  towards 
precision  in  diagnosis  and  towards  a  correspondingly  exact 
nomenclature.  To  this  end  he  must  make  his  interpretations 
explicit.  For  instance,  the  cause-effect  items  in  the  illustrations 
given  get  a  clear-cut  explicitness  in  "filial  distrust,"  "maternal- 
sexual  conflict,"  and  "spontaneous  paternal  responsibility."  By 
thus  expressing  interpretations  in  phrases  of  from  one  to  three 
carefully  chosen  words,  one  takes  an  essential  step  in  scientific 
method. 

The  reasons  for  attributing  importance  to  the  development 
of  interpretative  phrases  lie  in  the  intimate  interaction  between 
language  and  thought.^     A  word  or  a  phrase — a  symbol  of  mean- 


*  "It  Is  in  the  highest  degree  likely  that  language  Is  an  instrument 
originally  put  to  uses  lower  than  the  conceptual  plane  and  that  thought 
arises  as  a  refined  interpretation  of  its  content.  The  product  grows, 
in  other  words,  with  the  instrument,  and  thought  may  he  no  more 
conceivable,  in  its  genesis  and  daily  practice,  without  speech  than  is 
mathematical  reasoning  practicable  without  the  lever  of  an  appropriate 
mathematical  symbolism.  *  *  ♦  We  see  this  complex  process  of  the  in- 
teraction of  language  and  thought  actually  taking  place  under  our 
eyes.  ♦  ♦  *  The  birth  of  a  new  concept  is  invariably  foreshadowed  by 
a  more  or  less  strained  or  extended  use  of  old  linguistic  material;  the 
concept  does  not  attain  to  individual  and  independent  life  until  it  has 
found  a  distinctive  linguistic  embodiment.  In  most  cases  the  new 
symbol  is  but  a  thing  wrought  from  linguistic  material  already  in  ex- 
istence in  ways  mapped  out  by  crushingly  despotic  precedents.  As 
soon  as  the  word  is  at  hand,  we  instinctively  feel,  with  something  of  a 
sigh  of  relief,  that  the  concept  is  ours  for  the  handling.  Not  until  we 
own  the  symbol  do  we  feel  that  we  hold  a  key  to  the  immediate  knowl- 
edge or  understanding  of  the  concept." — Language,  Edward  Sapir,  p.  16. 

43 


ing — is  a  vital  thing.  The  very  effort  to  get  an  apt  term  to 
represent  the  meaning  of  a  group  of  fact-items  acts  Hke  a  magnet 
on  other  related  items  which  one  had  not  recognized  as  such. 
The  process  of  thinking  out  an  expression  like  "filial  distrust"  is 
a  process  of  selecting  from  the  mass  of  fact-items  in  a  case  his- 
tory those  which,  make  for  and  those  which  make  against  such  an 
interpretation.  Once  such  a  descriptive  phrase  has  been  sug- 
gested as  the  meaning  of  a  given  set  of  fact-items,  it  sharpens 
observation  in  studying  other  histories.  One  begins  to  note  both 
other  instances  of  filial  distrust,  and  also  distinctions  between  this 
special  kind  of  filial  distrust  and  additional  kinds  as  yet  but  half 
suspected.  The  content,  the  meaning  of  the  phrase  becomes 
clarified  and  enriched.^  Its  meaning  may  indeed  become  so  much 
enriched  that  this  phrase  will  be  superseded  by  two  or  three 
phrases  to  express  the  distinctions  between  one  kind  of  filial  dis- 
trust and  another  kind,  distinctions  which  a  systematic  reflection 
about  experience  has  shown  to  be  important. 

Besides  making  interpretation  clear  and  pregnant,  brief 
phrases  have  it  in  them  to  develop  into  a  set  of  diagnostic  terms 
common  to  all  case  work.  Such  terms,  if  developed  with  caution 
as  the  material  in  our  case  histories  makes  this  pK)ssible,  would 
lend  themselves  to  comparisons  between  histories,  possibly  in 
time  to  statistical  use. 

Precise  Interpretation  a  Basis  for  Systematic  Comparison 
The  degree  of  precision  in  interpreting  the  fact-items  in  our 
case  histories  which  has  been  here  indicated  is  an  essential  of 
any  systematic  comparative  study  of  these  histories.  It  is  ob- 
vious that  the  social  histories  of  no  two  clients  could  be  com- 
pared, were  the  attempt  made  to  set  the  ultimate  fact-items  in 


*  "It  is  a  common  experience  that  to  find  fit  language  for  our  im- 
pressions not  only  renders  them  clear  and  definite  to  ourselves  and  to 
others,  but  in  the  process  leads  to  deeper  insight  and  fresh  discoveries, 
at  once  explaining  and  extending  our  knowledge.  *  *  *  Impressions  may 
anticipate  words,  but  unless  expression  seizes  and  recreates  them  they 
soon  fade  away,  or  remain  but  vain  and  indefinite  to  the  mind  which 
received  them,  and  incommunicable  to  others." — "The  Teaching  of  Eng- 
lish in  England",  London,  1921,  p.  20. 

44 


the  one  over  against  the  ultimate  fact-items  in  the  other.  The 
items  taken  separately  have  not  enough  meaning  to  be  com- 
parable. Some  interpretation  must  organize  them  into  units  of 
significance  before  comparison  begins,  the  former  process  being 
expressed  in  progressively  exact  terms  in  order  to  facilitate  the 
latter.  Comparison,  recognized  as  an  integral  part  of  a  scientific 
method,  is  a  way  of  making  fact-items  in  one  client's  history 
illuminate  the  meaning  in  another  history  of  fact-items  which 
might  otherwise  be  overlooked  because  of  their  apparently  trifling 
character.  In  other  words,  it  makes  information  about  a  given 
conduct-pattern  in  case  A,  even  though  inadequate,  help  out  a 
different  inadequacy  of  information  as  to  the  same  conduct- 
pattern  in  case  B  or  C.  Various  features,  significant  for  treat- 
ment, inay  recur  in  A,  B,  C,  and  so  on,  yet  so  faintly  that  they 
escape  the  notice  even  of  an  experienced  worker  as  she  meets 
them  casually  and  in  random  sequence  among  other  features. 
The  students'  organizing  helps  to  superimpose  them,  so  that  their 
faint  lineaments  emerge  as  by  a  composite  photography.  If  one 
were  to  compare  twenty  histories  in  all  of  which  "filial  distrust" 
appeared  as  a  factor,  one  would  find  that  the  fact-items  behind 
the  interpretation  "filial  distrust"  differed  perhaps  considerably 
in  content.  Sometimes  it  would  be  a  daughter  and  mother,  as  in 
our  illustration,  sometimes  a  son  and  father;  sometimes  miscon- 
duct, sickness,  jealousies,  lack  of  affection  might  enter  in  as 
causative  factors  or  as  resulting  behavior.  Yet  when  these 
twenty  instances  of  "filial  distrust"  were  compared,  resemblances 
between  factors,  whether  of  conduct  or  situation  would  begin  to 
stand  out.  In  certain  of  the  instances  the  fact-items  would  show 
a  resemblance  as  something  distinct,  in  others  they  would  only 
hint  at  it.  The  study  of  all  twenty  together  would  throw  light 
on  the  elements  entering  into  filial  distrust  as  a  recurring  conduct- 
pattern,  and  might  even  suggest  tentatively  certain  typical  differ- 
entiations of  the  pattern. 

The  use  of  comparison,  common  to  all  scientific  fields,  has  an 
especial  value  for  the  field  of  the  social  thinker.  It  tends  to 
make  conspicuous  the  social  aspect  of  individual  conduct,  by  re- 
vealing typical  attitudes  to  social  values,  or  responses  to  similar 

45 


situations.  A  comparison  between  the  family  backgrounds  of  a 
group  of  normal  girls  who  have  got  into  difficulty  of  one  sort  or 
another  would  show  in  their  families  habits  of  feeling  and  acting 
about  social  conventions  which  are  habits  partly  at  least  because 
they  reflect  ideas  shared  by  many  famiHes.  These  typical  atti- 
tudes must  be  identified  if  educational  "forces"  are  to  reshape 
them. 

The  systematic  study  of  social  case  histories  here  advocated 
cannot  be  made  from  these  histories  as  they  are  now  written  by 
social  agencies  in  narrative  form.  The  first  step  in  such  study 
must  be  a  topical  analysis  of  the  material  in  each  history  used.^ 
An  analytical  scheme  for  social  study  must  lay  emphasis  upon 
social  categories.  Those  suggested'  by  the  present  writer  are 
the  categories  which  life  itself  imposes.  The  family  is  the  inner 
circle  that  first  imparts  to  the  personaHty  an  incubation  of  char- 
acter and  assimilation  of  its  social  heritage;  sex  in  any  view  is 
a  sort  of  magnetic  current  running  through  life  with  various  rein- 
forcing or  deflecting  possibilities  for  conduct ;  occupation  and 
recreation  aflford  obvious  theatres  for  the  realizing  of  social  pK>s- 
sibilities;  and  religion  enlists  the  influence  of  various  character- 
swaying  imponderables.  While  such  a  topical  history  does  not 
give  the  total  "picture"  of  the  case,  it  makes  comparison  between 
cases  possible.  Comparison  cannot  be  made  between  total 
pictures  but  must  be  between  factors  of  the  same  kind  within  these 
pictures.  To  put  it  differently,  we  cannot  speak  of  a  whole  social 
case  as  being  typical ;  it  is  certain  situations  and  conduct-patterns 
within  it  that  are  typical.  One  may  say  of  a  given  unmarried 
mother  that  her  sex-conduct  conforms  to  a  type — many  other 
unmarried  mothers  have  exhibited  the  same  sex-conduct — ^but 
this  conduct  plus  her  maternal  attitude  plus  her  success  at  work 
and  so  on  becomes  progressively  less  typical  and  more  individual. 


*  For  a  discussion  of  topical  analyzing  for  diagnosis  see  the  present 
writer's  Social  Case  History,  p.  148  (Russell  Sage  Foundation,  1920). 
Any  introspective  case  worker  will  recognize  that  the  moment  she  asks 
herself  what  are  the  conduct  and  situation  problems  she  has  to  meet 
in  order  to  help  her  client,  she  begins  to  arrange  her  information  about 
him  in  her  own  mind  under  such  topics  as  health,  family  situation, 
occupation  and  so  on. 

46 


The  total  sequence  or  combination  of  conduct-patterns  and  situa- 
tions with  their  interaction  is  unique.  Yet  the  worker  who  aims 
to  "individualize"  her  treatment  must  first  have  sensitized  her 
mind  to  a  recognition  of  situations  and  patterns  as  factors  that 
recur  among  many  individuals. 

Even  a  topical  history,  of  course,  takes  account  of  the 
sequence  of  episode  and  situation  that  dominates  a  purely  narra- 
tive history.  When  a  client's  case  runs  over  months  or  years, 
it  becomes  highly  instructive  for  the  student  of  progressive  inter- 
actions between  habit  and  situation.  Adjustment  or  maladjust- 
ment takes  place  by  stages  in  a  developing  course.  A  topical 
analysis  gives  due  recognition  to  the  time-elements  in  a  case  by 
taking  its  data  phase  by  phase — each  phase  representing  the  work- 
ing out  of  one  stage  in  the  whole  causal  process.^  In  this  way 
the  topical  history  keeps  its  emphasis  upon  diagnostic  values 
where  narrative  history  tends  to  play  up  dramatic  values. 

It  may  be  that  workers  accustomed  to  the  narrative  form  for 
writing  histories  will  raise  the  objection  to  an  analytic  interest 
that  it  slights  the  individuality  of  clients.  In  answer  the  student 
may  suggest  that  there  may  be  degrees  of  individuality  among 
people,  many  clients  having  less  of  it  than  workers  who  grow 
interested  in  them  would  like  to  believe.  Men  and  women  whose 
starved  lives  afford  but  a  limited  choice  in  activity  have  simple 
conduct-patterns  which  are  comprised  within  a  few  elemental 
groupings  such  as  those  of  family  and  work.  This  is  what  mental 
impoverishment  means.  The  total  picture  of  such  lives,  there- 
fore, made  up  relatively  speaking  of  a  small  number  of  simple 
types  of  conduct  and  situation,  lends  itself  more  readily  to  classi- 
fication, is  more  easily  thought  of  as  a  "typical  case"  than  is  the 
total  picture  of  a  life  of  rich  and  varied  opportunity.  The  latter 
life  with  its  numerous  complex  groupings  through  business,  pro- 
fessional, educational,  philanthropic,  and  other  social  activities, 
presents  a  combination  and  interplay  of  conduct  and  situation 
which  would  seldom  if  ever  be  found  repeated  in  another  person. 
For  it  must  be  remembered  that  each  different  social  activity 


*  Social  Case  History,  p.  168. 

47 


which  a  man  takes  on,  be  it  membership  in  a  trade  union,  a  cham- 
ber of  commerce,  a  school  board,  a  church  committee,  does  not 
go  on  in  a  compartment  by  itself  but  affects  in  one  way  or  an- 
other all  his  other  activities.  His  trade  union  interests  affect  not 
only  his  work  but  his  home  and  his  politics ;  his  school  board  con- 
nection influences  his  decisions  and  perhaps  his  standing  as  a 
member  of  a  church  or  of  a  chamber  of  commerce  committee  and 
so  on.  If  one  tries  to  imagine  the  effect  of  a  lopping  off  of  these 
interests  in  such  a  life,  one  can  perhaps  get  a  clearer  idea  of  what 
mental  and  social  impoverishment  really  means.  It  means  an  un- 
expanded,  narrowly  inclusive  self. 

Yet  however  close  to  the  typical  a  client's  conduct  and  situa- 
tion may  be,  the  attempt  to  get  a  total  "picture"  of  it  commits 
one  to  a  simplifying  of  his  life  history  to  a  few  outstanding  in- 
cidents which  fall  in  with  one's  special  slant  of  interest  in  the 
case.  This  way  of  thinking  about  social  case  histories  has  its 
valid  uses — in  other  directions  than  that  of  scientific  study.  As 
will  appear  later,  its  selection  of  facts  amounts  to  an  implicit  in- 
terpretation of  them  as  contrasted  with  the  explicit  interpretation 
demanded  as  a  basis  of  research.  The  social  case  worker  who 
objects  to  the  topical  analysis  of  a  client's  history  on  the  ground 
that  he  thereby  loses  his  "picture"  of  the  client  should  not  deceive 
himself  into  thinking  that  he  is  displaying  an  appreciation  of  the 
complex  nature  of  "individuality."  It  is  not  he  but  the  analyst 
who  gets  the  more  adequate  sense  of  complexity.  The  former's 
impressionistically  unified  conception  of  the  fact-items  in  a  client's 
history  tends  to  make  the  client's  conduct  as  a  whole,  his  "indi- 
viduality," appear  to  conform  much  more  closely  to  a  type  than 
the  facts  would  actually  warrant.  In  other  words,  the  client,  in 
the  mind  of  such  a  worker,  is  being  not  more  but  less  "individual- 
ized" than  in  the  mind  of  the  student. 

After  the  fact-items  in  a  social  case  history  have  been 
topically  analyzed,  all  interpretation  of  these  fact-items  must  be 
explicit  and  open  to  review  and  revision.  In  other  words,  the 
word  or  brief  phrase  which  embodies  the  interpretation  must  in 
every  instance  stand  over  against  the  group  of  fact-items  of 
whose  meaning  it  is  the  symbol,  as  has  been  done  in  the  case  of 

48 


all  illustrations  in  this  chapter.  In  this  way  the  student's  "per- 
sonal equation"  is  above  board  and  it  becomes  possible  for  suc- 
cessive students  to  criticize  and  to  supplement  one  another's 
work.  In  the  social  field  it  is  especially  necessary  that  such  re- 
vision should  be  provided  for.  Not  only  is  the  subject-matter 
new  and  complex,  it  is  one  in  which  the  traditions  and  training 
of  the  student  are  bound  to  aflfect  his  interpretation  of  fact-items.^ 
Indeed,  herein  is  his  peculiar  contribution.  If  he  does  his  best 
to  make  himself  aware  of  and  to  allow  for  his  prejudices,  he  can 
trust  that  others  with  diflferent  backgrounds  and  stores  of  experi- 
ence will  contribute  their  characteristic  insights  to  supplement  or 
qualify  his.  For  a  long  time  to  come  these  interpretations  of  con- 
duct and  social  situation  must  thus  be  thought  of  as  tentative. 

In  order  that  the  social  student's  interpretations  may  be  open 
to  review  it  is  necessary  not  only  that  he  should  accompany  them 
with  the  fact-items  on  which  they  are  based,  but  that  he  should 
exercise  caution  in  condensing  the  original  record  of  these  items 
in  the  case  histories.  The  need  for  this  warning  lies  in  the  fact 
that  the  case  histories  of  social  agencies  are  often  prolix.  Im- 
patience with  wordiness  or  with  seeming  irrelevance  may  easily 
lead  a  student  either  to  discard  or  to  reduce  to  a  generalized  state- 
ment fact-items  that,  while  of  trifling  evidential  value  taken  item 
by  item,  may  taken  together  yield  an  integrated  meaning.  The 
objection  to  such  a  compressing  of  evidence  is  that  compression 
is  in  itself  a  process  of  interpretation.  By  discarding  fact-items 
or  by  condensing  a  number  of  them  into  a  merely  general  state- 
ment, a  student  is  impvosing  his  own  diagnosis  upon  them  in  a 
way  that  is  not  open  to  review  by  other  students.  He  obliges 
the  latter  to  accept  his  interpretation  because  he  has  denied  them 
the  data  on  which  he  based  it.  For  study  purposes,  therefore,  it 
is  necessary  to  include  every  fact-item  however  trifling,  provided 


*  Indeed,  as  I  have  previously  noted  (Studies  of  the  Boston  Confer- 
ence on  Illegitimacy,  1914),  the  traditions  and  training  of  the  observer 
more  or  less  condition  the  nature  of  the  fact-items  that  make  their  ap- 
pearance. "Two  visitors  who  know  the  same  girl  may,  through  their 
different  personalities,  bring  out  and  become  cognizant  of  quite  differ- 
ent facts  in  her  experience.  In  this  sense  the  subject-matter  of  much 
social  study  is  unstable.  Not  only  do  two  students  perceive  different 
facts,  they  actually  in  a  measure  make  different  facts  to  be  perceived." 

49 


that  when  taken  with  other  items  it  goes  to  make  up  a  meaning. 
There  is  another  reason  why  for  scientific  study  social  his- 
tories may  have  to  remain  detailed  for  the  present,  and  that  lies 
in  the  conditions  of  work  and  in  the  training  of  those  who  collect 
the  facts.  Dictation  for  typewriting  when  done  under  pressure 
gives  histories  which  are  again  and  again  so  loosely  expressed 
that  one  cannot  be  sure  enough  of  the  exact  meaning  of  a 
sentence  as  to  venture  on  a  concise  rewording  of  it.  If  the 
meaning  of  these  fact-items  appears  clear  when  they  are  viewed 
along  with  others,  the  student  may  in  spite  of  their  haziness  in 
themselves  use  them  to  further  interpretation.  The  training 
of  workers,  important  strides  though  it  has  made,  cannot  get  far 
in  equipping  them  to  heed  the  fact-items  of  most  relevance  in 
their  clients'  histories,  because  it  cannot  yet  supply  their  minds 
with  a  funded  thought,  with  a  requisite  set  of  expectations.  It 
is  just  here  that  a  research  worker's  method  for  precise  inter- 
preting should  prove  of  service  in  training  case  workers.  It 
should  draw  from  case  histories  diagnoses  which  will  quicken  the 
minds  of  workers  with  expectations  of  a  sort  to  awaken  observa- 
tion and  to  make  their  selection  of  material  more  discerning.  If, 
for  instance,  a  recurring  import  becomes  disclosed  in  "filial  dis- 
trust," "spontaneous  responsibility,"  "maternal-sexual  conflict," 
which  will  interest  workers  and  sharpen  their  perceptions,  it  will 
mean  that  they  will  soon  be  getting  into  their  histories  more  perti- 
nent material  bearing  on  these  conduct-shaping  ideas.  With  im- 
proved material  the  student  can  then  in  turn  draw  sharpened 
interpretations  which  may  be  of  value  in  treatment. 

If  compression  is  an  implicit  interpreting,  so  also  in  a  some- 
what different  sense  is  the  common  use  of  descriptive  terms  with- 
out fact-items  behind  them.  Note,  for  example,  the  italicized 
terms  in  the  following  statements : 

Mrs.  Jones   realizes   Eleanor's  superficiality  and  self- 
centeredness. 

Fannie  had  been  a  good,  quiet  girl,  obedient,  truthful, 
and  helpful  in  every  way. 

The  Browns  live  in  a  middle-class  residential  neighbor- 
hood. 

50 


Such  words  as  self-centered,  obedient,  truthful,  lazy,  middle- 
class,  are  commonly  employed  in  social  case  histories  as  if  they 
conveyed  a  statement  of  fact,  whereas  actually  each  of  them  rep- 
resents an  opinion,  a  snap  judgment  upon  numerous  half -noted 
acts  of  the  person  so  described.  Many  acts  on  the  part  of 
Eleanor  and  of  Fannie  went  to  make  up  what  was  called  self- 
centeredness  or  obedience  and  truthfulness;  many  factors  of 
structure,  upkeep,  congestion  entered  into  the  neighborhood  de- 
scribed as  "middle-class." 

The  mental  process  by  which  such  description  is  arrived  at 
is  the  reverse  of  that  which  precedes  interpretation.  "A  good, 
quiet  girl,  obedient,  truthful,  and  helpful"  stands  for  a  com- 
paratively unanalyzed  impression  of  a  total  of  conduct.  The  un- 
disciplined mind  thinks  only  in  such  wholes.  Since  many  of  the 
people  from  whom  social  workers  gather  their  information  have 
untrained  mental  processes,  the  latter  are  apt  to  think  of  the 
conduct  of  a  daughter,  a  nephew,  a  boarder,  in  terms  of  its  total 
impression  and  to  give  little  heed  to  the  specific  acts  which  have 
given  rise  to  that  impression.  Although  these  impressions  are 
not  without  a  certain  value  as  giving  a  general  estimate  of  char- 
acter, they  must,  as  the  scientific  study  of  conduct  increases,  be 
felt  as  less  and  less  adequate.  Conduct  which  one  person  would 
describe  as  obedient,  another  would  call  suggestible ;  what  to  one 
would  seem  truthfulness,  to  another  would  appear  to  be  dis- 
courtesy or  lack  of  imagination ;  what  a  first  observer  sees  as  self- 
centeredness  another  might  regard  as  sensibility  or  even  as  force- 
fulness.  The  term  "middle-class"  was  applied  by  one  social 
worker  to  a  street  occupied  by  well-built  old  houses  which  were 
being  rapidly  crowded  in  at  sides  and  back  by  "three-decker" 
tenements — a  replacement  of  well-to-do  Yankees  by  foreign-born 
working  people.  Another  worker  used  the  same  word  to  describe 
a  street  made  up  of  small  single  houses  with  yards,  some  of  which 
had  been  built  or  adapted  for  two  families — a  neighborhood  which 
had  been  unchanged  in  outer  aspect  for  many  years,  Whether 
between  these  two  neighborhoods  there  was  a  common  factor  in 
the  economic  level  of  the  dwellers  information  is  insufficient  to 
determine.     Certain  it  is  that  other  workers  might  apply  the 

51 


same  term  to  somewhat  more  prosperous  streets  than  these. 
Probably  the  two  workers  referred  to,  in  using  the  word  "middle- 
class,"  were  expressing  what  was  merely  a  general  impression  of 
streets  tenanted  by  self-supporting  families  of  small  means.  An 
adjective  that  is  thus  used  to  describe  anything  that  lies  between 
slums  and  well-to-do  streets  has  too  little  meaning  to  be  of  value. 
Differences  in  the  habitats  and  physical  surroundings  of  people 
are  of  enough  importance  in  the  ways  in  which  they  reflect  and 
affect  character  to  make  requisite  more  exact  distinctions  drawn 
between  various  tyi>es  of  neighborhoods  and  more  exact  terms  in- 
vented to  describe  them.  Dr.  Ira  Wyle,  writing  of  "laziness"  in 
school  children,^  calls  attention  to  various  types  of  conduct  so 
stigmatized,  and  urges  discrimination  between  laziness,  inertia, 
indolence,  sloth,  idleness.  In  other  words,  analysis  of  the  fact- 
items  that  make  up  the  total  usually  called  "laziness"  show  it  to 
be  a  blanket  term  for  several  types  of  conduct  each  of  which 
would  call  for  different  social  treatment. 

If  case  histories  are  to  serve  social  research  the  future  train- 
ing of  the  social  case  workers  must  prepare  them  not  only  to 
analyze  their  own  impressions — that  goes  almost  without  saying — 
it  must  also  fit  them  to  perform  the  more  difficult  task  of  eliciting 
a  real  analysis  of  the  client's  conduct  and  surroundings  on  the 
part  of  his  parents  and  friends — people  who  more  often  than  not 
are  habituated  to  the  mere  registering  of  impressions.  Skill  of 
this  sort  must  precede  any  progressively  effective  imderstanding 
and  treatment  of  maladjusted  situations.  A  first  step  toward 
such  a  training  and  skill  could  be  taken  by  the  practice  of  accom- 
panying descriptive  terms  in  the  case  histories,  whenever  possible, 
by  the  fact-items  on  which  they  are  based.     Thus : 

Kind-hearted. 

Employer  says  "Jennie  is  kind--hearted.  She  insisted 
on  my  staying  in  bed  when  I  was  not  feeling  well,  brought 
up  my  meals,  and  did  my  part  of  the  work  as  well  as  her  own. 
She  is  almost  too  ready  to  help  the  children  with  their 
lessons." 


Mental  Hygiene,  Jan.,  1922. 

52 


Emotionally  unstable. 

Margaret  shows  much  emotional  instability,  sometimes 
overflowing  with  animal  spirits  and  hilarity,  at  other  times 
in  the  blue  depths  of  depression. 

When  evidence  is  thus  displayed  in  juxtaposition  with  the 
impression  of  kind-heartedness  and  instability  created  by  it,  the 
case  worker  and  the  student  alike  can  note  its  inadequacies  and 
can  point  out  certain  additional  evidence  needed.  Was  this  con- 
duct of  Jennie's  usual  or  did  it  occur  when  she  wanted  favors? 
Did  Margaret's  ups  and  downs  bear  any  relation  to  her  physical 
condition  or  to  the  praise  or  blame  accorded  her  by  others  ? — and 
so  on.  While  certain  fact-items  as  to  Jennie's  conduct  are 
known,  items  about  the  setting  for  that  conduct  (an  approaching 
picnic,  perhaps)  and  items  indicative  of  her  own  attitude  (self- 
interest  as  against  social  sensitiveness)  are  lacking;  and  while 
certain  items  of  a  general  sort  about  Margaret's  conduct  are 
known,  items  about  its  setting  (the  outer  provocations  for  her 
alleged  moods)  and  about  her  health  as  a  factor  in  her  attitude 
are  lacking.  In  other  words,  "kind-hearted"  and  "emotionally 
unstable"  are  both  seen  to  be  vague,  impressionistic  terms  in  that 
the  fact-items  that  supply  the  content  of  their  meaning  in  these 
instances  include  items  about  only  one  of  the  three  elements — 
conduct,  setting  ("environmental  stimulus"),  and  attitude  of  the 
actor — that  enter  into  a  conduct-pattern.  It  is  only  by  this  sort 
of  analysis  that  more  explicit  meanings  can  be  developed  for  a 
vocabulary  descriptive  of  conduct  and  situation. 

The  development  of  explicit  meanings  for  words  of  praise 
and  blame  has  a  professional  interest  to  the  case  worker.  These 
words  are  a  social  tool  employed  by  any  and  every  group  of 
people  for  molding  or  disciplining  its  members  into  habits  useful 
to  the  purposes  of  the  group  in  question.  A  refinement  of  the 
meaning  of  such  words,  brought  about  by  the  collecting  of  the 
fact-items  in  many  actual  instances  of  conduct  called  "kind- 
hearted,"  "unstable,"  and  so  on,  would  confront  the  worker  with 
such  facts  for  self-knowledge  as  would  train  her  to  make  her 
comment  on  the  conduct  and  situation  of  her  client  more  exact 
and  hence  more  influential. 

53 


For  instance,  a  comparison  of  the  evidence  on  which  twenty- 
five  instances  of  conduct  described  as  "over-conscientious"  had 
been  so  termed,  might  change  this  adjective  from  one  which 
case  workers  as  well  as  others  think  of  as  conveying  approval  of 
moral  intent  to  one  which  they  would  clearly  recognize  as  imply- 
ing disapproval  of  faulty  social  perspective.  It  might  demon- 
strate the  kind  of  mischief  wrought  by  ethical  piddling. 

The  Unit  of  Interpretation 

With  the  fact-items  in  a  social  case  history  arranged  under 
categories — health,  family,  habitat,  occupation,  etc. — and  with 
precautions  taken  against  implicit  interpretations,  the  research 
student  is  confronted  with  the  question,  how  many  of  the  fact- 
items  in  the  history  shall  he  include  within  a  single  interpretation  ? 
He  can  follow  any  one  of  four  alternatives.  First,  he  can  think 
of  all  the  items  in  a  history  as  pointing  to  one  diagnosis,  e.  g.,  a 
non-support  case,  a  dependent  mother,  deserted  wife,  delinquent 
boy,  difficult  girl  case.  The  objection  to  such  diagnoses  is  that 
they  have  only  a  partial  sort  of  utility.  Even  for  their  purposes 
of  immediate  treatment  social  case  workers  feel  a  need  of  cut- 
ting in  deeper  than  this.  Second,  the  student  can  sense  a  mean- 
ing for  all  the  items  falling  within  one  general  category.  The 
items  about  John's  health  could  be  interpreted  in  such  phrases  as 
"vigorous  and  normal,"  or  as  "delicate  and  undernourished"  and 
so  on ;  those  about  his  family  in  such  as  "earnest,  devoted  parents," 
or  as  "deteriorating  broken  home" ;  those  about  his  occupation,  as 
"steady  textile  worker,"  or  as  "roving  cabinet  maker."  These 
phrases,  while  more  explicit  than  "non-supix>rt"  or  "delinquent 
boy"  case,  are  still  too  general.  The  lack  in  explicitness  strikes 
one  most  in  the  phrases  applied  to  health.  Is  this  because  in  the 
established  science  of  medicine  analysis  has  gone  so  much  further 
than  in  social  thinking  that  even  a  layman  suspects  such  a  phrase 
as  "vigorous  and  normal"  to  need  qualification  in  some  important 
particular?  The  phrases  "earnest  devoted  parents,"  "steady 
textile  worker,"  etc.,  are  also  vague  in  important  ways — in  ways, 
that  is,  that  leave  understanding  more  inexact  and  treatment  more 

54 


groping  than  they  need  be.  The  explanation  of  vagueness  in 
these  phrases  is  the  same  as  of  that  in  the  words  "kind-hearted" 
and  "emotionally  unstable"  just  discussed.  "Earnest  devoted 
parents"  takes  account  only  of  the  parents'  attitude,  and  ignores 
not  only  the  acts  through  which  the  earnestness  and  devotion  got 
expressed — acts  which  may  have  been  unintelligent — but  also  the 
environment — which  may  have  been  one  which  the  parents  them- 
selves did  not  understand  and  hence  one  in  which  they  could  not 
successfully  guide  their  children.  To  say  of  a  juvenile  offender, 
therefore,  that  he  has  "earnest  devoted  parents"  is  to  offer  an 
interpretation  of  his  family  background  so  vague  as  to  give  rise 
to  what  may  be  an  erroneous  impression  of  the  influences  actually 
operative  within  his  home.  "Steady  textile  worker"  leaves  out 
of  account  the  employee's  attitude — liking  or  loathing — and  his 
occupational  setting — insanitary  or  the  reverse.  Is  his  steadiness 
a  hopeless  acquiescence  or  a  cheerful  purposiveness  ? 

For  purposes  of  treatment  diagnoses  of  this  second  sort  are 
useful  in  default  of  anything  better.  If,  however,  the  treatment 
of  maladjusted  situations  is  to  become  progressively  discriminat- 
ing in  its  application  of  means  to  ends,  these  diagnoses  are  as 
much  too  vague  and  general  to  forward  such  practical  purposes  as 
they  are  to  serve  the  purposes  of  research.  It  may  be  thought, 
therefore,  that  the  student  is  reduced  to  employing  a  third  course 
of  interpretation :  the  supplying  of  a  separate  diagnostic  term  for 
every  fact-item  in  a  social  case  history.  This  could  conceivably 
be  done.  The  attempt  to  do  it,  however,  quickly  demonstrates 
that  in  a  social  history  single  fact-items,  while  they  have  mean- 
ing, are  apt  to  have  insufficient  meaning  to  serve  any  social  pur- 
pose. In  other  words,  social  fact-items  are  not  discrete;  they 
are  rather  so  knit  together  in  a  causally  relevant  network  that  in 
drawing  out  any  one  item  one  necessarily  draws  out,  if  his  mind 
is  on  its  significance,  a  number  of  others  which  cling  to  it.  Social 
meaning,  therefore,  is  a  property  not  of  single  fact-items,  as  a 
rule,  but  of  groups  of  items.  Interpretation  and  its  descriptive 
terms  should  be  applied  to  the  smallest  group  of  fact-items  which 
has  a  social  import.     Such  a  cluster  of  fact-items  may  be  thought 


55 


of  as  a  unit  of  meaning,  a  social  fact.     This  is  the  fourth  method 
of  interpreting,  and  is  the  one  here  advocated. 

To  determine  in  any  given  instance  what  is  the  smallest 
group  of  these  fact-items  which  has  social  import  is  a  matter  of 
judgment.  Nevertheless,  a  fair  consensus  of  judgment  should 
be  possible  where  the  interpretative  purpose  is  the  same.  Let  us 
consider  the  following  "units  of  meaning." 

Self-sacrificing  maternal  frugality. 

Mrs.  Melledge  had  her  ticket  back  (to  her  home  village) 
and  $16.00  cash,  of  which  she  planned  to  give  Beatrice  $15.00 
to  pay  her  board  in  the  maternity  home.  Although  it  would 
be  three  months  before  she  received  her  next  pension  money, 
she  proposed  to  return  home  with  $1.00.  She  said  she  had 
potatoes  in  the  house  and  might  be  able  to  sell  a  little  wood. 

Unloving  marital-filial  covertness. 

Gertrude  said  that  when  her  father  would  forbid  her 
leaving  the  yard  to  play  with  boys,  her  stepmother  would 
quietly  tell  her  to  run  out  the  back  way.  Looking  back  she 
now  believes  her  stepmother  wanted  her  to  get  into  trouble 
so  that  she  would  have  to  leave  home ;  yet  at  the  same  time 
she  recalls  with  bitterness  her  father's  "interference"  with 
her  boy  friendships. 

Filial  affection. 

Patricia  wrote  her  father  a  long  letter  and  repeatedly 
said  to  others  that  she  was  eager  to  see  him.  She  preferred 
to  have  him  see  her  after  the  birth  of  her  child,  because  she 
believed  it  would  be  easier  for  him  than  when  confinement 
was  imminent.  When  the  baby  had  come  and  her  father 
had  not  been  in,  Patricia  appeared  hurt. 

While  the  fact-items  "Mrs.  Melledge  had  her  ticket  back  and 
$16.00  cash,"  "Gertrude  said  that  her  father  would  forbid  her 
leaving  the  yard  to  play  with  boys,"  "Patricia  wrote  her  father  a 
long  letter"  each  means  something  taken  by  itself,  its  meaning  is 
too  incomplete  for  social  thinking.  On  the  other  hand,  each  of 
these  groupings  of  items  has  a  meaning  clear  enough  to  warrant 
one  in  giving  it  a  tentative  term.  It  is  the  smallest  identifiable 
fragment  of  a  conduct-pattern  or  situation. 

56 


The  student  must  of  course  expect  that  occasionally  the  same 
fact-item  may  unite  with  more  than  one  group  to  make  different 
meanings.  The  item  *Tda  held  wet-nurse  position  with  her  baby 
for  nine  months"  here  joined  with  other  items  to  make  the  mean- 
ing maternal-sexual  conflict,  might  be  ranged  along  with  a  dif- 
ferent set  of  items  to  give  industrial  instability. 

Ida  worked  for  one  year  in  different  shops  in  her  home 
town.  After  the  baby's  birth  she  held  two  wet-nurse  posi- 
tions with  it  for  nine  months.  Her  employers  said  she  was 
slack — no  concentration.  She  was  then  placed  at  board  with 
the  baby  for  two  months,  during  which  time  she  worked  in 
four  different  shops. 

In  the  first  grouping  Ida's  holding  two  positions  for  several 
months  each  is  taken  along  with  other  fact-items  as  evidence  of 
her  love  for  her  child  and  desire  to  have  it  with  her ;  in  the 
second  grouping,  taken  with  a  different  set  of  fact-items,  it  indi- 
cates that  her  best  occupational  showing  was  pretty  poor. 

It  will  undoubtedly  be  recognized  that  any  and  all  of  the 
groupings  or  clusters  of  fact-items  here  given  as  illustrations  get 
their  meaning — filial  distrust,  maternal-sexual  conflict,  self-sacri- 
ficing maternal  frugality,  etc.,  etc., — not  only  from  the  cause- 
effect  relation  among  their  respective  fact-items  but  also  from  a 
felt  relation  between  these  meanings  and  the  whole  course  of  the 
case  history.  This  is  necessarily  so,  since,  as  said  before,  all  the 
fact-items  in  any  social  history  get  their  relevance  within  a 
causal  network.  In  identifying  such  a  partial  meaning  as  filial 
distrust  or  maternal-sexual  conflict  the  student  has  at  the  back 
of  his  mind  the  remotor  causes  and  effects  of  the  conduct-patterns 
here  involved  as  they  appear  in  the  respective  case  histories.  In- 
deed, it  is  these  remoter  causes  and  effects,  either  known  or  fore- 
shadowed, which  give  the  patterns  importance  and  which  show 
them  as  typical  or  recurring.  The  maternal-sexual  conflict  is  a 
typical  conduct-pattern  in  unmarried  motherhood.  Two  sets  of 
feeling  and  behaving  habits,  the  maternal  and  sexual,  which  in 
married  life  may  even  reinforce  each  other,  under  conditions  of 
unmarried  maternity  will  often  compete,  with  consequences  for 
mother  and  child  and  for  the  public.     In  the  process  of  analysis 

57 


it  may  be  a  sense  of  these  imperfectly  observed  consequences 
which  gives  the  student  his  pre-vision  of  the  concept  maternal- 
sexual  conflict.  The  mind  moves  constantly  back  and  forth  be- 
tween the  content  of  a  given  partial  interpretation  on  the  one 
hand  and  the  rest  of  the  social  history  on  the  other. 

Following  is  a  skeletonized  section  of  a  social  case  history, 
reduced  to  forty-eight  fact-items.  These  items  have  been  com- 
bined into  fifteen  groupings  in  accordance  with  what  appear  to  be 
their  most  immediate  causal  bearings,  and  an  interpretative  phrase 
has  been  given  each  grouping, 

A  Dependent  Mother  Case 
Fact-Items 

1.  Mother,   now   deceased,   lived  in   miserable   rooms   over  a 

saloon  for  five  years.     (1916-21.) 

2.  Her  husband  before  his  death  took  this  place  because  low 

rent  and  he  employed  in  saloon  below. 

3.  Landlord  allowed  mother  to  stay  without  paying  (pending 

her  insurance  money). 

4.  Mother  gave  as  reason  for  staying  the  fact  that  she  did  not 

want  to  change  school  for  children  (April,  1917). 

5.  Her  brothers  and  aunt,  chagrined  at  her  quarters,  wished 

her  to  move  to  a  suburb  near  them.  Offered  to  help,  as 
did  also  friends  and  foster  relatives.     (1916  and  1917.) 

6.  Mother  said  (April,  1917)  that  the  poor  locality  made  her 

friends  stop  coming  to  see  her. 

7.  Neighbors'  daughters  would  not  go  with  daughter  Grace  be- 

cause of  locality.     (April,  1917.) 

8.  Childhood  friend  of  mother  said  (May,  1917)  :  (a)  She  was 

well  behaved  but  stubborn  as  a  child;  (b)  she  is  now 
(May,  1917)  losing  ground  morally;  (c)  he  has  seen 
her  intoxicated. 

9.  Mother's  foster  aunt  said   (Jan.,  1917)  :  she   (a)  had  had 

careful  bringing  up ;  (b)  went  down-hill  after  marriage. 

10.  Mother's  own  aunt  said  ('Nov.,  1916)  :  she  had  poor  bring- 

ing up.     (Kind  but  careless  foster  parents.) 

11.  Mother    said    (Nov.,    1920)  :    she   withdrew    from    Baptist 

Church  partly  because  she  and  her  children  did  not  fare 
well  at  Christmas. 

12.  A   neighbor   informed   the  overseers   of   the   poor    (Aug., 

1918)  that  mother  buys  beer. 

13.  Mother  said  beer  was  for  her  neighbor  upstairs. 

58 


14.  She  gave  this  explanation  a  week  later  only  after  being 

pressed  for  one. 

15.  Neighbor  upstairs  confirmed  her  explanation. 

16.  Social  worker  saw  her  boy  of  12  years  apparently  intoxi- 

cated.    (April,  1917.) 

17.  Visiting  housekeeper  said  (Feb.,  1920)  :  (a)  Mother  incom- 

petent housekeeper;  (b)  does  not  stay  at  home. 

18.  Family  mother  worked  for  said  (1922)  she  was  an  incapable 

and  indifferent  worker. 

19.  They  had  known  her  five  years.     (1916-21.) 

20.  She  kept  a  man  lodger  five  years.     (1916-21.) 

21.  She  declined  work  at  a  dispensary  on  ground  that  men  were 

around  there.     (/Nov.,  1916.) 

22.  At  different  times  during  five  years  of  widowhood  gave  her 

earnings  as  $2.00  to  $4.50  per  week.     (1916-21.) 

23.  She  asked  social  worker  for  more  work.     (April,  1916.) 

24.  A  woman  told  social  worker  in  district  that  mother  died  of 

miscarriage.     (June,    1922.) 

25.  This  informant  according  to  social  worker  not  a  gossip. 

26.  Overseers  of  poor  said  (April,  1916)  mother  is  honest  and 

reliable. 

27.  Fulton  Market  man  spoke  well  of  her.     (Feb.,  1916.) 

28.  She  paid  her  landlord  3  months'  back  rent,  and  paid  other 

bills.     (Dec,  1916.) 

29.  Policeman   on   beat    says   daughter   Grace    used   to    swear 

fluently.     (April,    1922.) 

30.  Grace  had  to  be  kept  at  school  by  truant  officer  during  last 

months  before  age  of  14.     (Sept.,  1916.) 

31.  Grace's  employer  dismissed  her  (Oct.,  1916)  because:  (a) 

she  went  on  the  street  with  boys ;  (b)  she  neglected  her 
work. 

32.  Miss  F.  of House  said  (Mar.,  1917)  :  (a)  Grace  fre- 

quents the  street  with  boys ;  (b)  Grace  seems  to  be  wild. 

33.  Overseers'  visitor  believed  (April,  1917)  Grace  wild. 

34.  Social  worker  said    (April,   1917)  :    (a)    Grace  pretty  and 

bold-looking  girl;  (b)  apparently  going  wrong;  (c)  on 
the  street  most  of  the  time;  (d)  saw  her  hanging  about 
the  entrance  to  a  saloon  with  a  young  man. 

35.  Mother's  doctor  questioned  (Jan.,  1922)  Grace's  morals. 

36.  Mr.  Morse,  a  childhood  friend  of  Grace's  mother,  would  not 

let  his  daughter  play  with  Grace  (May,  1917)  on  ground 
that  Grace  was  wild. 

37.  Grace  married    (Dec,   1918)    at   16  without   her  mother's 

knowledge. 

59 


38.  Grace's  husband  a  man  of  poor  repute  (gambling  and  dis- 

honesty).    (1922.) 

39.  Grace's  income,  as  reported  (Apr.,  1922)  is  inadequate  to  re- 

spectable living. 

40.  Neighbors  saw  (Jan.,  1922)  her  young  sisters  stealing  from 

a  market  wagon. 

41.  Policeman  warned  Grace  and  her  husband  that  unless  this 

stopped   he   would   have   them   up  as   receiving   stolen 
goods. 

42.  Since  this  warning,  the  children  have  looked  better  cared 

for,  and  there  have  been  no  further  complaints. 

43.  Children  begged  (1922)  of  mother's  former  employer. 

44.  In  January,  1922,  children  came  to  office  of  relief  society 

for  aid — apparently  at  Grace's  instigation. 

45.  Police    referred    (Feb.,    1922)    children   to    Prevention   of 

Cruelty  Society  because  they  had  gone  around  begging. 

46.  Neighbors  say  the  children  seem  better  cared  for  than  when 

mother  was  alive, 

47.  Grace  has  become  Catholic  (her  husband's  religion)  and  has 

had  her  young  sisters  do  the  same. 

48.  Grace  says  she  feels  her  mother's  early  separation  from  her 

family  was  regrettable,  and  wished  to  spare  her  sisters 
that  experience. 

Social  Facts 

a.  Questionably  trained  mother  (foster  child)  8,^  9,  10. 

b.  Financially  reHable  widow,  26,  27,  28. 

c.  Disreputable  habitat,  1,2,5,  6,  7. 

d.  Deteriorated  status,  c  (habitat),  3,  4,  30. 

e.  Shiftless  houseworker,  17,  18,  19,  22,  23,  {21). 

f.  Intemperate  mother,  12,  13,  14,  15,  16,  8. 

g.  Circumspectly  incontinent  widow?  20,  21,  24,  25. 

h.     Maternal    neglect,    c    (habitat),    d    (status),    k    (unchaste 

daughter),  1  (filial  secretiveness),  16,  30,  17,  46,  20. 
i.      Perfunctory  worker,  31. 
j.     Coarse-mannered  girl  (daughter),  31,  33,  34,  36,  29. 


^The  italicized  numerals  stand  for  fact-items  which  appear  in 
more  than  one  grouping.  Question  marks  indicate  a  highly  tentative 
interpretation. 

60 


k.  Unchaste  girl  (daughter)?  j  (coarse-mannered  girl),  31,  35. 

1.  Filial  secretiveness^  (ill-selected  clandestine  mating),  37,  38. 

m.  Exploitation  of  siblings,  39,  40,  41,  42,  43,  44,  45. 

n.  Fraternal  responsibility,  46,  47,  AS,  42,  39. 

o.  Increasing  religious  seriousness,  11,  47, 

Social-Fact  Groups 

a — h.     Demoralizing  home  conditions;  broken  home. 
i — 1.       Difficult  girl  (wayward,  wild), 
i — o.      Apparently  regenerating  girl  ? 

Type  of  Case 

a — o.     Dependent  mother. 

As  will  be  at  once  observed,  the  items  fall,  many  of  them, 
into  more  than  one  grouping,  or  "social  fact."  Also,  a  g^ven 
grouping  may  bear  more  than  one  interpretation,  depending  upon 
the  worker's  purpose  at  the  moment.  If  the  agency's  treatment 
of  Grace  began  after  she  was  married,  and  took  into  account  her 
relation  with  her  husband,  the  interpretation  of  items  37  and  38 
might  be  "ill-selected  clandestine  marriage,"  whereas  if  treatment 
began  while  she  was  in  her  mother's  home,  centering  on  her  as  a 
difficult  girl,  the  interpretative  phrase  might  be  "filial  secretive- 
ness."  The  same  is  true  with  regard  to  the  interpretation  "filial 
distrust"  previously  used.  Were  one's  purpose  the  treatment  of 
the  stepmother,  the  same  fact-items  might  be  described  as  "dis- 
loyal stepmother."     Items  4  and  30  which,  so  far  as  they  go,  con- 


*  In  the  small  number  of  histories  from  which  illustrations  in  this 
chapter  have  been  drawn  the  writer  has  three  times  had  to  get  an 
interpretative  term  to  express  a  lack  of  frank  affection  between 
daughter  and  mother:  i.  e.,  filial  distrust,  unloving  parental-filial 
covertness,  and  filial  secretiveness^  This  of  course  suggests  that  here 
is  a  recurring  factor  in  the  situation  of  difficult  girls.  It  is  to  be  noted, 
however,  that  each  of  the  three  situations  instanced  seemed  to  call  for 
a  somewhat  different  term.  This  may  mean  that  analysis  of  more 
histories  will  identify  differences  within  this  lack  of  parental-filial 
confidence  such  as  may  lead  to  a  refinement  on  present  treatment 
methods.  As  bearing  on  this  suggestion  note  John  Dewey,  op.  cit.,  p. 
321:  "We  need  a  permeation  of  judgments  on  conduct  by  the  method 
and  materials  of  a  science  of  human  nature.  Without  such  enlighten- 
ment even  the  best-intentioned  attempts  at  the  moral  guidance  and  im- 
provement of  others  often  eventuate  in  tragedies  of  misunderstanding 
and  division,  as  is  so  often  seen  in  the  relations  of  parents  and  chil- 
dren." 

61 


tradict  each  other  as  to  the  mother's  attitude  toward  her  chil- 
dren's schooling,  suggest  that  more  data  might  yield  interpreta- 
tion in  an  important  direction.  As  they  stand  their  import  is  too 
uncertain  to  be  put  into  words. 

It  will  be  noticed  that  interpretations  d,  h,  and  k  are  based 
not  merely  on  fact-items,  but  on  a  union  between  fact-items  with 
other  interpretations.  "Deteriorated  status"  includes  "disreputa- 
ble habitat"  as  one  of  its  component  parts;  "unchaste  girl"  in- 
cludes "coarse-mannered  girl"  as  an  evidential  item;  "maternal 
neglect"  includes  "habitat,"  "status,"  "unchaste  daughter"  and 
perhaps  more  doubtfully  "filial  secretiveness." 

The  fifteen  interpreted  "social  facts"  may  in  turn  be  grouped 
into  larger  units  to  give  more  inclusive  meanings.  The  interpre- 
tations a  to  h  can  be  taken  to  mean  "demoralizing  home  condi- 
tions" or  "broken  home" ;  i  to  /  to  mean  "difficult  girl"  \  i  to  o 
"apparently  regenerating  girl" ;  while  the  whole  fifteen  social 
facts  taken  together  may  be  called  a  "dependent  mother"  case. 
These  interpretations  become  more  vague  and  less  indicative  of 
the  course  of  treatment  that  might  further  social  adjustment  as 
they  get  further  away  from  the  first  interpretation  of  the  fact- 
items.  This  goes  to  confirm  the  pK>stulate  discussed  on  pp.  54-55 
that  the  socially  significant  aspects  of  a  case  can  be  identified  by 
efforts  to  appraise  the  imfK>rt  not  on  the  one  hand  of  the  separate 
fact-items,  nor  on  the  other  of  the  fact-item  total,  but  of  inter- 
mediate causally  knit  fact-item  groups. 

What  has  been  said  of  the  continuous  network  of  social 
facts  explains  the  limitations  for  research  of  questionnaires  or 
printed  forms.  This  latter  method  is  adapted  to  the  statistical 
study  of  discrete  facts,  that  is  of  fact-items  which  have  become 
identified  with  their  import;  it  is  not  adapted  to  the  study  of 
material  in  which  the  import  of  the  fact-items  is  not  yet  identi- 
fied. Take,  for  instance,  the  term  immoral  which  sometimes 
appears  in  printed  forms.  What  are  the  fact-items  suggested 
by  such  a  meaning?  The  word  is  defined  in  Webster's  New 
International  as  "vice;  wickedness;  unchastity,"  thus  covering 
anything   from  a  belated  marriage  to   gross   degeneracy.     The 

62 


word,  in  short,  can  be  associated  with  such  widely  differing  sets 
of  fact-items  that  figures  gathered  under  this  heading  yield  no 
useful  insight.  By  dividing  the  general  term  into  its  specific  sub- 
categories— assault,  fornication,  bigamy,  and  so  on,  one  gets 
terms  which  |X)int  to  more  definite  social  situations,  although 
they  are  still  too  loose  for  yielding  figures  that  will  indicate 
methods  to  lessen  sex  misconduct.  In  order  that  social  hygien- 
ists  and  educators  should  focus  the  influences  at  their  control 
upon  the  various  motives  involved  in  irregular  sex  conduct,  they 
need  to  have  the  many  varying  types  of  conduct  and  situation — 
meanings  of  explicit  fact-item  groups — clearly  identified.  Take 
again  the  term  dependent,  defined  by  Webster's  as  "unable  to 
help  or  provide  for  oneself."  What  here  is  the  range  of  fact- 
items  pointed  to?  The  social  worker  at  once  asks  "to  provide 
for  oneself  in  what  respect?"  Is  a  rich  invalid  a  dependent,  or 
are  college  students  whose  tuition  fees  fall  short  of  the  cost  to 
the  college  of  maintaining  the  courses  they  take?  In  one  sense 
they  are,  but  not  in  so  far  as  the  social  worker's  purpose  is  con- 
cerned. It  might  then  be  said  that  we  should  limit  the  applica- 
tion of  dependent  to  those  persons  who  come  under  the  attention 
of  social  workers.  But  how  about  the  people  who  have  free 
medical  care  at  a  dispensary  supplied  with  social  service?  Are 
those  dependent  who  receive  the  services  of  a  social  worker  in 
advice  or  training,  or  only  those  who  accept  material  things? 
These  latter  are  necessities  of  life,  but  no  more  so  than  is 
medical  care,  schooling,  facilities  for  cleanliness,  and  many  other 
things  that  we  are  coming  to  think  of  as  indispensable.  In  other 
words,  with  a  term  so  vague  as  to  its  possible  constituent  fact- 
items,  it  does  not  profit  whether  figures  tell  us  we  have  25  or 
1.000.  As  with  immoral,  we  must  qualify  dependent  by  subdivid- 
ing its  applications  with  supplementing  terms  that  point  to  qualify- 
ing fact-items  in  actual  cases.  For  the  present  not  even  the  sub- 
divisions of  these  vague  meanings  stand  for  discrete  facts. 

Whether  systematic  interpretation  and  the  building  up  of 
diagnostic  terms  can  be  brought  to  a  uniformity  and  exactness 
such  that  these  terms  may  be  available  for  statistics  one  would 


63 


not  venture  to  predict.  The  method  suggested  in  this  study 
should  at  any  rate  facilitate  an  intensive  comparison  of  the  con- 
duct-patterns of  maladjusted  persons  and  thereby  throw  light  on 
processes  of  social  education  that  are  or  that  might  be  made 
formative. 


64 


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